How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

The Fourth Horseman: Excerpt 6

2020-06-04T07:26:00.000-05:00

This is all of chapter 4, in which Suzanne buys a dress and sits in a chair with Anastase.

The other excerpts can be found here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4
Excerpt 5

*****

Chapter Four

“I was thinking,” my father said over dinner that night. “Since your mother is on the road to recovery, we could go into town for dinner next Saturday, maybe to that sushi place you like. Maybe bring Gabriel. Interested?”

“Sorry, I can’t on Saturday,” I said. “It’s Homecoming.”

My father dropped his fork to his plate. “You’re kidding.”

“I have to go. Gabriel’s nominated.”

“Do you believe this?” my father asked my mother. “Are you hearing this?”

My mother shook her head, smiling. “You’ve met Gabriel, right, dear?”

“Our daughter. Dating the Homecoming King!”

I rolled my eyes. “He hasn’t won. He’s just nominated.”

My dad fluttered his eyelashes at us. “I wished for this day, but I never thought it would come true. Will there be a limo? What are you going to wear?”

I sighed. “No, there will not be a limo, and I’ll wear a dress or something.”

“What dress?” my mother asked.

I thought about the contents of my closet. I had many dresses, mostly black, mostly t-shirt style good for summer. “I dunno. A dress,” I said.

“Anything with sequins?” my father asked.

My mother ignored him, her full attention on me. “Do you have one that isn’t black?”

“Unlikely,” I admitted.

“We’ll go Monday,” she said. “My classes are over at three, so take a car from school and meet me at my office.”

Wait, was my mother actually offering to take me dress shopping? Herself? “Um . . . okay,” I said.

“Maybe something off the shoulder,” my dad said, hitching his shoulder up and pouting at us.

“Eat your potatoes, dear,” my mother said, handing him his fork.

*****

After some discussion and consultation with the women in my mother’s department, who all seemed to adore her and be pleased to be consulted, we ended up at Mayfair Mall in the Milwaukee suburbs, where they had a Nordstrom, and so were deemed to be most likely to have something suitable.

Mayfair was a suburban mall in the old style; all indoors, with little plazas around fountains and piped in music. We started at security, where my mother rented one of those little scooters with a basket on it and got a map of all the elevators. “We don’t have to do this,” I said as we headed down a creepy service hallway to find an access elevator. “If your leg is bothering—”

“It’s fine.” My mother waved my concern away with one hand. “I’ve got a scooter.”

“But we don’t—”

“If you think you can use my leg as an excuse to get out of trying on dresses, think again,” my mother said. “Press the button.”

I pressed the button. My mother had been remarkably upbeat about her injury since it happened, adjusting to each accommodation, laughing about her challenges, but I thought it was mostly an act; she was pretending to be fine with a scooter or a wheelchair or crutches or the foldout bed in the living room, because to not be fine with it was futile. Maybe a better description was “coping mechanism.” Either way, it probably wasn’t kind to challenge her about it.

I’d used my power to speed her healing in the first days after the injury, and it had helped, but I could only do a little bit: I didn’t know how to control it and too much help would put her into the realm of medical miracle and result in all sorts of questions. Still, when I saw her struggle up the stairs or grit her teeth against the idea of taking a pain pill or even like this, on a rented scooter with a red flag flapping above her, I itched to do more. We didn’t use our powers enough, none of us, and it was beginning to frustrate me.

We mixed in with the other girls and their parents in the Nordstrom dress department, all clearly on the same mission. “What do you think of this?” I asked, holding up a long black velvet sheath.

“I think you look would like Mortitia Adams,” my mother said. “Nothing black.”

“What! Why not?”

“Because you wear black almost every day. You should wear a color for a change. Like this.” She held out the skirt of a short red dress that flared out like a drink umbrella.

“No red,” I said. “I don’t want to go as a slutty vampire.”

We went back and forth for almost two hours, my mother maneuvering her scooter through the racks, using one of her crutches to hook dresses, me pulling my shirt on and off in tiny dressing rooms, until finally we found it. The dress. I’d been apathetic about the choice when she brought it to me, draped over the basket on the front of her scooter.

“It’s beige,” I said. “That’s not a color.”

“Well, it’s also not black or red or pink or green,” she said, listing all the colors one of us had already vetoed. “Just try it on.”

There’s was no point in arguing—she would just have to see me dressed like a sack of oatmeal to be convinced—so I took the dress and closed the dressing room door. It was beige, but in the unfortunate overhead light I noticed it had some shimmer to it, like silver threads shot through. I unzipped it and slipped it over my head, adjusting myself in the halter-style top and zipping it up before I turned around.

It was amazing.

The material clung to my figure, but not in a tight way, just in a . . . a clingy way, until the skirt swirled out from my thighs. Against my skin, the beige made me seem almost tan, and the silver thread intensified somehow toward the bottom to give the impression of foam washing up on a beach. I was a mermaid on the sand.

I opened the door and my mother saw me and gasped. She gasped.

“Oh, Suzanne.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “Suzanne.”

“I know,” I said. “This is . . .” I held out my hands.

“How much is it?” she asked.

I felt a flare of panic. Of course a dress this spectacular would be super expensive, way more than my mother wanted to spend on something frivolous like a Homecoming dress. I fished the price tag out from under my arm and showed it to her without even glancing at it. I didn’t want to dash my own hopes.

“Oh, that’s fine,” she said. “What color shoes do you think would work?”

I blinked. My mother and I had agreed on a dress I was going to wear. In public. And now she was buying me shoes. I wasn’t sure the day could get any stranger.

*****

We came back home with bags of stuff, like sherpas coming down off the mountain. I did the hauling, my mother inching up the short kitchen staircase behind me.

"Successful trip?" my dad asked, pulling out a chair for her, which she plopped into gratefully.

"You could say that." I dropped the bags holding the shoes and the makeup and the special underwear onto the floor for Brady to stick his nose in and draped the garment bag with the dress over a chair.

"Wait until you see it, Robert," my mother said. "It's just beautiful."

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Spencer. "Mom picked it out," I said, as I answered the phone. "What's up, Spence?" I asked, heading into the living room. Except Gabriel, the Beryls rarely called, preferring to text, but I thought maybe Spencer wanted to talk about what had happened in the hallway. That wasn't really a texting conversation.

But he wasn’t calling about himself at all. “Can you come over?" he asked. "Anastase is messed up."

I paused. Spencer was the resident Anastase-whisperer, the one who could deal with him when none of the rest of us could, not only because he could read Anastase's mind, but also because he was Anastase's favorite by far. The rest of us were nothing compared to Spencer. If he couldn't handle whatever was happening . . . "What's wrong?"

"He's not physically hurt, he just needs someone . . . older, I guess, and Merri's still at school."

"Okay, okay. I'll see what I can do." I went back into the kitchen. "Spencer's having some sort of homework crisis. Can I . . .?" I trailed off hopefully.

"Take your things upstairs and go," my mother said. "And take your dog."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" I kissed her cheek. "For the dress, for everything."

"You're welcome," she said, shooing me away. "Go on."

*****

Brady and I didn’t run, exactly, but by the time I got to Gabriel’s house I was out of breath and sweating a little and my hair was frizzed up from the rain that had started during the drive home from the mall. I stopped for a second on the front porch to catch my breath, and Brady curled up on the dog bed the Beryls had put on the porch for him.

Spencer opened the door before I could knock. “Oh, good, thank you. I don’t know what to say to him.”

“About what?” I asked, following him in. At the end of the hall, the kitchen light was on, but the rest of the house was full of shadows.

“He’s in here.” Spencer took the three steps down into the sunken den. “Ana?”

Anastase sat by the window in the large winged chair we all thought of as his, his legs hanging over the arm. It was chilly in the room, but he wore only a white t-shirt and jeans and didn’t move or speak when we came near.

“Suzanne’s here,” Spencer said. “Did you want to talk to her?”

Again, nothing. Up close, I could feel the breeze sweeping in through the window, droplets of mist spattering through the screen. Even though I was still overheated from hauling my ass over to his house, the rush of cool air made me shiver.

“I’m gonna go,” Spencer whispered to me.

“Wait, Spence,” I said, but he was already hustling out of the room. Little jerk.

“Spencer says there’s something wrong with you,” I said. “There better be, because I came all the way over here in the rain, and I have to get back for dinner, so let’s hear it.” I waited a couple seconds. “Today, Anastase.”

He shifted in the chair, folding his arms across his chest, and still said nothing.

“Alright, dude.” I turned to leave, and felt the strange cold grip of his hand around my wrist. Normally Anastase’s touch was warm, if not hot, one of the benefits of being a fire Elemental.

I waited.

After a second, he swallowed. “Clarissa broke up with me.” The words were low, not a whisper, but deep and quiet.

“Oh.” I sat on the arm of the chair and patted his shoulder. “Wow . . . I’m really sorry.”

Anastase said nothing more. I was sorry, but I was also confused. Clarissa had broken up with Anastase. It was almost inconceivable. She worshipped him. She hung on his every word. I had come over to spend time with Gabriel one Sunday afternoon and found her doing Anastase’s laundry. Not them doing laundry together, but her doing his laundry in his house. And she had left him.

“I’m sure it’s . . . you just had a fight. She’ll come around.”

He laughed, but it sounded like choking. “No, I don’t think so. She says I don’t love her.”

“Oh.” If she had finally noticed that fact, maybe she wouldn’t be back. “Well, um . . .”

He folded in on himself, knees up, head down, until he was balled in the chair, smaller than I had ever seen him. It took me a second to realize, but the faint shake of his shoulders meant he was crying. Anastase Beryl was crying.

“Shit,” I muttered before I could stop myself. “Ana, hey.” I touched his arm and he moved, suddenly, grabbing for me.

I’d been the recipient of a number of Anastase’s advances, not all of them before Gabriel and I were together. Anastase had made clear, over and over again, that if I were willing he would be happy to have sex with me and damn the consequences.

But this wasn’t the same.

This was awkward and sad. Anastase twisted in the chair, and I shifted, and then I was half in the chair with him, his arms tight around my waist, his face hot and damp against my neck, his hair in my nose. “Shh.” I patted his back as best I could. “Anastase, shh.”

He shuddered against me. I’d never known anyone who cried silently, but Anastase did, hot tears on my collarbone, hands twisted in the fabric of my sweater. I moved a little, until I could get my arms around him properly, and hug him close, one hand in his fine, blond hair. It was still awkward—the chair wasn’t really made for two people, and the wing was digging into my shoulder—but it was better.

He didn’t say a single word. Neither did I, because everything I thought of to say—“it’ll be okay” “you’re okay” “you’re fine”—would be a lie. Nothing can be done about an ending; when something is truly over, the only way out of the pain is through it.

Anastase stopped crying after a few minutes and I tensed up, because I figured it would be a matter of time before he tried to take advantage of my sympathy. But he didn’t. He just leaned against me, his breath on my neck. When the breeze came through the screen, I could feel goosebumps raise up on his bare arms and then subside, like the coming and going of the tide.

I’m not sure how long we sat there, Anastase folded against me like miserable origami, but my shoulder had started to ache when the lamp came on.

“Hey, Ana, I just heard—” Gabriel stopped, halfway into the room. He had on his letterman’s jacket, and rain sparkled in his dark hair like dew. “Suzanne.”

“Hi.” I waved.

Anastase lifted his tear-stained face off my shoulder. His skin was blotchy and his eyes were red. He took one look at Gabriel and released me, pushing me gently off the chair to my feet.

“I, um.” Gabriel looked back and forth between us. “Spencer said Clarissa,” he said. “I’m sorry. I, uh . . .” He stopped, running a hand through his hair, then turned and walked out of the room.

*****

I didn’t even think, I just followed him. “Gabriel,” I called, but he was moving fast, through the kitchen and up the back stairs. “Gabriel! Stop!”

He didn’t, though, so I chased him all the way up to his room and managed to get my foot between the jamb and the door before he closed it. “Go away,” he said, but he stepped back from the door and let me in.

Another dark room, another upset Beryl. “Gabriel,” I said. “Don’t be mad.”

He glared at me as he stripped off his jacket. “Why not?” he demanded. “I walk in and I find you and him—“

My anger flared. “Me and him, what? What are you accusing me of?”

“You were touching him.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I was comforting him,” I said. “It wasn’t anything else. Nothing happened.”

“I don’t—” He stopped. “I turned on the light and there you were.”

“Give me a break. You think I came over to your house to make out with your brother in your living room?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” he muttered.

“Gabriel, I’m not.” I wanted to stay angry at the unjust accusation, but in the dim light from he hallway, Gabriel looked miserable, and I couldn’t inflict more hurt on him. I knelt down in front of him and rubbed his kneecaps with my hands. “But nothing happened. Spencer called me and I came over and . . . I felt bad for him.”

Gabriel snorted a laugh through his nose. “Why does everyone always feel sorry for Anastase?”

“His girlfriend broke up with him,” I said. “You feel bad for him, too. Don’t even lie.”

“She broke up with him because he treated her like crap,” Gabriel said. “Why should he get any sympathy?”

“Well, if I were her friend, I would give her sympathy, but I’m not.”

He sighed. “I just don’t—it surprised me, is all.”

“I thought you were over this,” My hands slid up his arms and around his neck, my body between his knees.

His hands went to my hips, almost automatically. “I am if you are,” he said.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because I had made my choice months ago, and I was happy with it, with Gabriel, happier than I’d ever been with a boyfriend, but there were still those moments when I saw the sun in Anastase’s hair, or the tilt of his mouth, and thought about what might have been. I was asking Gabriel to be over something I wasn’t over, not completely, and it wasn’t fair, and I couldn’t be honest with him about it, so I lied.

“Gabriel.” I stared into his eyes. “You know I am.”

For a second, I thought he would ask again, but instead he kissed me, slow and cautious at first, like he was checking for signs of Anastase, but then deeply, his arms tightening around my waist they way they always did. I hugged his neck and kissed back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, when we paused for breath, our foreheads touching. “I know I’m crazy.”

“You’re not.” I kissed him. “I mean, you sort of are, but I get it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Another kiss. “I bought a Homecoming dress today.”

“Really? Who are you going with?”

“I hear Anastase is single now, so . . .”

“Wow,” Gabriel said, his arms tight around me so I knew he knew I was kidding. “Harsh!”

“Too soon?” I kissed his cheek, his neck, his ear. “Wait until you see this dress, though. You’re gonna die.”

“I can’t wait,” he said. “I know you think Homecoming is dumb—”

I shrugged. We’d had this conversation before.

“—but it’s our first big, like, thing, and I’m hyped about it.”

It was endearing, the way he talked about it, the excitement lighting up his eyes. “I can’t say I’m hyped about it,” I told him, “but I’m happy I’m going with you. And seriously, my dress? Is amazing.”

Gabriel kissed me again. “You’re amazing,” he said, and it felt like he was saying something else, something more.

*****end chapter 4*****

Character Post: Anastase Beryl

2020-04-22T07:36:00.000-05:00

NOTE: This post contains spoilers for The Fifth.

Peter Murphy. ::swoon::

Oh, Anastase, Problem Child Extraordinaire. At the beginning of The Fifth, Anastase is terrible. He's selfish, he's rude, he's heartless, and all of that makes him incredibly attractive to Suzanne, who has, sincerely, the worst taste in men. He's one of those guys who you know you should stay away from and yet don't want to.

Originally, my conception of Anastase's physical appearance was based on the singer Peter Murphy from Bauhaus, that angular, mysterious, dangerous vibe, that people either love or hate. A more modern approximation is actor/model Luke Eisner, although he's a little too . . . healthy looking for Anastase. He needs to drop a little weight -- maybe pick up a teeny coke habit or something -- and then he would be perfect! :)

If Luke Eisner loses 20 pounds, he is Ana.

Because he's the First of his Circle, Anastase thinks that means his decisions are the right ones, and he doesn't spend a lot of time on worry or self-doubt. Anastase's feelings of superiority are only amplified by his magical abilities, and he and Spencer are the ones who make the most day-to-day use of their abilities, although Ana's are mostly for his own amusement. Because he is automatically in charge, he hasn't spent much time working on his leadership: Anastase is not comforting and not safe.

As a Fire, he has the physical ability to create and control fire, and he can also physically create things, which includes an ancillary power to heal himself and others. (This isn't, like, Wolverine's power to heal -- it's really difficult and slow -- but he can do it with enough time.)

While he and Merri consult on a lot of things, Anastase is emotionally closest to Spencer, who he views almost as his own child. In fact, Spencer may be the only person besides himself who he really cares about, at least in The Fifth. He has little use for his mother, or Gabriel. He's awful to his girlfriend. He is, absolutely, not a good person, and Suzanne's attraction to him is a perfect embodiment of how messed up her judgment is with regard to dudes.

Another shot of Peter Murphy. Those cheekbones!

On the other hand, knowing someone who isn't a good person is sometimes very handy. Because he doesn't really care about "right and wrong," Anastase is ruthless when he needs to protect himself or his Circle, and capable of anything. In the first confrontation with Morgan in The Fifth, Anastase absolutely would have sacrificed Suzanne in exchange for Spencer if the situation had required it. And once Suzanne is a member of the Circle, Anastase is committed to helping her at the risk of his own life, and even at the risk of Spencer's. Once you're in with Anastase, it takes a lot for him to put you out.

The Fourth Horseman: Excerpt 5

2020-04-19T21:15:00.001-05:00

The latest excerpt, still from Chapter 3, in which Suzanne encounters a bully and talks about sex.

Previous excerpts are here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4

*****

The football team had a bye week in anticipation of Homecoming (and the fact that I even knew what a “bye week” was was a testament to how much I liked Gabriel), so Gabriel showed up at my locker after school to join me and Spencer on the walk home.

“We’re so happy for you,” Spencer told him, ducking under his arm to hug him.

“Are we?” I asked, sliding in under Gabriel’s other arm.

“You are a terrible liar,” Gabriel told Spencer, hugging him close.

“Fag,” someone muttered behind us.

I snapped my head around and saw a couple of kids around Spencer’s age snickering into their hands.

I took a step toward them. “What’d you say?”

They scowled at me. “Nothing,” one of them answered.

“No, really, what’d you say?” Gabriel asked, his voice mild and friendly, his arm still around Spencer’s shoulders.

The bullies shrank back when they realized who they just messed with. “Nothing, man. It was a joke.”

“Oh, okay.” Gabriel nodded. “Did you think it was funny, Suzanne? That joke?”

I knew what he was doing with his calm demeanor, and I appreciated it, but I wanted to pound these little jerks into jam. “No,” I managed between gritted teeth.

“Yeah, me either. Maybe stop telling jokes about my little brother,” Gabriel suggested to them. “Okay?”

They glanced at each other, unsure of how to respond.

Gabriel took a step toward them. “I said ‘okay?’”

Instinctively, they took a step back. It was like watching hyenas shy away from a lion.“Okay,” one of them mumbled.

“Okay, see ya, guys.” Gabriel’s smile was sunny and warm, but his hand was clenched at his side.

The kids scurried away like the dogs they were.

“What the hell was that?” I asked Spencer, who shook his head.

“Nothing.”

“That’s the second time nothing happened today,” I said.

Another shake of his head. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” I said.

“I can take care of myself,” Spencer said.

Gabriel gave his shoulders a little shake. “We know,” he said. “But you don’t have to.”

Spencer’s “okay” was just as mumbled and miserable as the bully’s had been. He didn’t look convinced, but if he didn’t want us to be involved, we couldn’t help. His verbal agreement was as much as we could hope for.

*****

It was a perfect autumn afternoon for a walk—blue sky, bright leaves, cool enough for a jacket, but not actually cold—one of those days you see on television in an advertisement for pumpkin spice lattes. We kicked leaves at each other, and Gabriel debriefed us on the duties required of a member of the Homecoming Court (none, really, except he had to be on-time for rehearsals and wear a suit to the dance), and we pretended we’d forgotten what happened in the hallway, even though neither Gabriel nor I had forgotten and Spencer knew we hadn’t forgotten, which is probably why he told Anastase the instant we got inside the house.

Anastase was in his chair in the den, scrolling through his phone when we came in.

“I was called a name at school and they’re making a big deal out of it.” Spencer plopped down on the rug at his brother’s feet.

Anastase set his phone aside. “Really?”

“Some kids called him a fag,” I said.

“We didn’t make it a ‘big deal’,” Gabriel said. “I just explained that wasn’t a good idea.”

Anastase’s attention shifted to Spencer. “Well?”

“I can handle it,” he said. “I don’t need people riding to my rescue.”

“They did it right in front of us!” I said. “We’re not going to stand there like idiots.”

“I don’t understand the problem,” Anastase said. “Isn’t this the point of Gabriel? For situations like this?”

“Gee, thanks,” Gabriel said, but Anastase was sort of right. Gabriel wasn’t the most powerful Elemental in our Circle, but he was the most socially powerful by far. His popularity smoothed over some of the rough spots I had to navigate, for sure. If he couldn’t use his power to shelter Spencer from the slings and arrows of high school, what use was it?

“Fine.” Spencer ducked his head to Anastase’s knee and closed his eyes when Ana’s fingers slid into his hair.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” Anastase said, knocking his knuckles on Spencer’s skull.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” Spencer parroted.

“You’re welcome,” Gabriel said. “Both of you. I’m going to get a drink, you want something?” he asked me.

“Water, thanks.” I waited until he was in the kitchen. Anastase was back at his phone with one hand, his other stroking Spencer’s hair back like he was a pet. “You guys should be nicer to him,” I murmured, so Gabriel couldn’t hear me. “He did you a favor.”

Spencer had the grace to open his eyes and give me a guilty look. “I know, I’m sorry. I am grateful.”

“Act like it a little.” I pointed a finger at him.

“I will.” Spencer nodded.

I waited for Anastase to say something, apologize for being dismissive, anything, but he didn’t look up from his phone.

“Okay, good talk,” I said, and went to join Gabriel in the kitchen.

*****

We took our drinks up to Gabriel’s room, and I flopped down on the bed while Gabriel emptied out his backpack on his desk. It wasn’t a big deal, Spencer getting called a name, but I wondered how often it had happened, and if anything worse was going on. Spencer wasn’t much younger than me, and he was a more powerful Elemental, but he had been raised by Anastase, sheltered and babied, and didn’t have much experience with people, and I wanted to murder anyone who was the slightest bit mean to him. This, I thought, must be what being a big sister felt like.

“Hey.” Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. “You said you had something to tell me about your mom. What happened?”

Oh, God. This was not a conversation I had planned on having today, but it sort of made sense to talk about now, before the Homecoming dance.

“No, it’s . . . I’m not in trouble. It’s sort of a way to stop me from getting into trouble, actually.” I laughed an awkward laugh like a lunatic. Why was I so nervous? It wasn’t like we weren’t going to have sex eventually, so I didn’t know why discussing it felt so risky. But Viva kept dancing around in my head, all conversations she’d had to have, all the things she had to do now.

Gabriel left his book bag and sat down on the bed next to me. “Alright, tell.”

“Okay . . . not sure how to say this, so . . . my mother has offered to put me on birth control. The pill. And I think I’m going to take her up on it.”

Gabriel rocked back like I had slapped him. His mouth closed, then opened again.

“Yeah, exactly,” I said.

“I’m not sure what to say,” he said. “You, um . . . want to?”

“I want to be on birth control,” I said. “As for the other part, I do, but . . .” I wasn’t sure how to explain the rest without hurting his feelings. I wanted to have sex with Gabriel. Sometimes, I really wanted to, but I always wanted to, to some degree, all the time. The main thing holding me back was what I had explained to Jason: sex with Gabriel was more than boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, which was already important enough. Because of the Circle, it would become part of my life forever, not something I could move on and forget about later.

“Yeah, it’s a lot,” Gabriel said, then clapped his hand over his mouth as I burst out laughing. “Wait, it’s not — I didn’t mean—“

I snorted. “I know what you meant,” I said. “I think that’s why I haven’t, you know, pushed for more.”

“Me too,” Gabriel said. “Not that I didn’t want to, but with the Circle and all . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s significant, somehow. More significant.”

“You’re not a virgin, though, right? I mean, you and Jason . . .”

“I’m not,” I said. “Jason and a couple boyfriends after.” Four after Jason, but the actual number wasn’t important.

He nodded. “I’m not, either,” he said.

“Angela.” I nodded. Of course, Angela would be one of them. They’d been together for months and, from what I’d heard, had been the type of power couple people basically thought of as married, so it was a safe assumption they had been having sex. Gabriel didn’t say anything else, though, and his attention was suddenly focused across the room. “Wait . . .” I stared at him. “Just Angela?”

“Um . . .”

“Oh my god, Gabriel, just Angela? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “I’m not even sure she knows. It seemed like the right time and she was expecting it and—“ He shrugged. “It worked out.”

“Got a lot of practice in, did ya?” I nudged him.

“Enough,” he said. “I mean, we didn’t go out super long.”

“Gabriel Beryl, you slut!” I hugged him. “Bagging a cheerleader on your first attempt.”

“What about you?” he asked, leaning into me. “You seduced a gay guy!”

I laughed. “It’s more like I turned a guy gay, but let’s use your version.”

Gabriel curled his arms around me and shifted me until we were lying on the bed, me on my back, him propped on one arm above me. “So.” He kissed me once, sweetly. “You think about it?”

I ran a hand over his firm arm. “Sometimes.”

“I think about it,” he said. “And I think when we’re ready, we’ll know.”

There's no dog in the scene, but you would be surprised how
hard it was to find a non-dirty version of this type of snuggling.

I nodded. “I’m gonna tell my mother yes, then.”

“Stop talking about your mother,” he said, and kissed me again, this time less sweet. I’d dated a lot when I lived in Milwaukee, enough to know that even hot guys, guys I thought I liked, could be sexually incompatible. One of the four guys after Jason had been an incredibly sexy drummer from another high school who I lusted after for a month before I finally hooked him, and who I stopped seeing immediately after our first time. He’d been nice—not rough or selfish or pushy or anything—but it had been . . . mediocre. Like neither one of us were really having a good time, but both of us kept going because we were so into each other we thought it had to get better, and it hadn’t. He’d sounded relieved when I told him we had to break up so I could “focus on my school work.”

With Gabriel, though, it kept getting better. He kissed me and all of the awkwardness that came along with making out with someone—the arm on my hair, or knocking teeth together, or someone elbowing someone else—still happened, but it didn’t matter compared to the rest of it, the feeling of kissing him, of touching him.

This time didn’t go very far—we usually didn’t when his family was home because it felt weird—and ended up lying on the bed, arms around each other, Gabriel’s head on my chest. It was one of his favorite positions, and mine too, honestly. It was one of the few ways I felt like I was taking care of him.

I stroked his hair back from his face. “You know what this means,” I said.

“Mmm,” Gabriel answered. His eyes were closed; if I left him alone he would probably fall asleep against me. I sort of wanted him to.

“My mother likes you,” I murmured.

“Of course,” he mumbled. “I’m very likable.”

I kissed the top of his head. “Understatement of the year.”

*****

end excerpt 5

Character Post: Suzanne Parker

2020-04-15T06:30:00.000-05:00

Hi, Random Girl!

This post contains spoilers for The Fifth.

This picture of this random girl who I have not been able to identify despite my best efforts, is as close to Suzanne as I have been able to find on the internet. This girl is not quite as alternative in style as Suzanne is, but Suzanne is not as goth or alternative as the pictures that turn up when I google those key words, so this girl will have to do. Imagine her wearing more black and more eyeliner and you'd have her about right.

Contrary to the beliefs of some of my friends, Suzanne is not me.* She and I are similar in many ways, but Suzanne comes from a very different background and operates with a level of self-assurance I never would have had as a girl her age, because she comes from privilege and, as a result, has the belief that she should get what she wants when she wants it. Sometimes, that makes Suzanne kind of a bitch in the bad way. In fact, one of the reviews from a stranger of The Fifth indicated that, although they liked the book, they didn't like Suzanne very much. That's cool: I don't really believe in "likability" for a character anyways, especially not female characters.

I also think that Suzanne can be a bitch in a good way, as well. She stands up for what she believes in, and she is not afraid of a fight. That means sometimes she lashes out when she shouldn't, but Suzanne is not a girl who is going to be pushed around.

Her weakness, though, or one of them, is that she is attracted to people who seem mysterious to her, because she thinks they know something she doesn't know. She dismisses Gabriel as obvious, and likes Anastase and Morgan because they are mysterious. She really overvalues that as a good quality and part of her arc in The Fifth is her realizing that everyone--even Gabriel, even her parents, even herself--is more than they seem.

Suzanne is a Fifth, which means she got a little bit of every power (although not much at the moment) and can amplify the power of others. She doesn't have a defined strength or weakness, an ambiguity in her powers that we'll see more of in the sequels. But The Fifth isn't really about Suzanne learning to use her magical powers, it's more about her learning to live in her relationships with other people, and how those relationships make her stronger than she would be on her own.

~~~
*Although, true story, I picked her name because it is similar in spelling to my own. That is purely practical, though -- it makes it really easy to type. :)

The Fourth Horseman, Excerpt 4

2020-04-10T07:18:00.000-05:00

In which Suzanne goes to a pep rally. A pep rally!

Previous excerpts are here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3

*****

Chapter Three

In retrospect, I should have hounded Merri more, pushed him look harder at his vision, or at least more often. But as the pain in my chest faded, so did my desire to face the bad news we might find, and my reluctance was shared by the Beryls. Anastase was trying to graduate high school, Spencer was trying to survive it, and Gabriel and I were wrapped in our own little bubble of love, a bubble barely dented by Merri’s warning. Even Merri himself was distracted by his after school activities, his friends, his college applications. Our everyday lives seemed more urgent than a vague vision of something maybe happening in the future that might be bad. As Merri often said, the future wasn’t set, so it was easy to ignore this warning and hope it came to nothing.

But even if we had taken the vision seriously, even if I had hounded Merri to look, would we have been able to change what happened? I don’t know. I want to say yes, but I think that’s just because no one wants to admit they’re powerless in the hands of fate.

So life went on, and by Friday, we had mostly forgotten about the warning, distracted by the impending Homecoming Game and associated ceremonies, including the pep rally. In my opinion, pep rallies were dumb excuses to get out of real classes that could actually teach things, a rare instance when I was in favor of class, but Benowa took its school spirit seriously. As I walked into the field house toward the bleachers, the crowd around me hummed with excitement, wondering who would be on Homecoming Court. It was pretty ridiculous.

But since attendance was mandatory, I scanned the large open area for Spencer. As a member of the football team, Gabriel would sit in the rows of folding chairs lined up at the edge of the basketball court, and Student Activities Chair Merri would be announcing the Court, so Spencer was my only companion for this interminable ceremony of high school life.

I saw him come through the doors on the other side of the field house. He wasn’t as tall as Anastase and Gabriel, yet, but he was taller than most of his classmates, and his blond hair glimmered in the fluorescent light.

“Spencer!” I waved.

He didn’t hear me. A clump of kids passed him, three or four boys, and as they did, he flinched away from them. I stopped waving. Spencer lifted his eyes to follow their progress as they moved ahead of him, and when he did, he noticed me and smiled. I smiled back, but I didn’t like what I’d just seen.

“What was that?” I asked when he got close enough to speak to without shouting.

“What?” Spencer hooked his thumbs into the straps of his backpack and shifted it on his shoulders.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “What did they say to you?”

“Who?” Spencer said. “Come on, let’s get seats.”

I followed him up the bleacher stairs. We climbed to the top row and sat down against the wall. Spencer took off his backpack before we sat down and put it on the bench, so no one could sit next to him.

“Stop avoiding the question,” I said. “You know who. Those boys who went by you.”

He shook his head, smiling like I was crazy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did they say something to you?” I asked. “Are they bullying you?”

Spencer laughed. “Yeah, right. Like they could.”

He wasn’t wrong. Spencer was the most powerful of all of us, able to control air and electricity and read people’s minds. He had been the first one Gabriel and I turned to when I was in trouble last spring. But there was a big difference between fighting someone with magic and dealing with the day-to-day crap of high school. Spencer couldn’t shock other kids with lightning bolts if they hurt him. “Spencer, you can tell me if—”

He glared at me. “There’s nothing to tell, okay?”

“Okay.” I held up my hands in surrender. “But you could tell me if there were.”

He rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe we have to come to this,” he said. Subject: changed.

“Right?” I said. “At my old school we would always cut pep rallies.”

“Weren’t you afraid you’d get caught?” he asked, eyes big. Spencer loved the tales of my minor excursions into juvenile delinquency.

“Not really,” I said. “Besides, oh no, we cut a pep rally, oooh. It wasn’t like we skipped an actual class. Viva got caught once, when she was coming to meet us, and all she got was two days of detention.”

“Two days?” Spencer asked. “Not even a week?”

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s a pep rally.”

At that moment, as if I had summoned the pep with my words, cheerleaders burst through the doors, waving pom poms and signs in time with an awful pop song blaring over the loud speakers. Two of them carried a giant paper banner that read “GO BEAVERS” on it in red and white, the school colors.

“Go Beavers,” I muttered in Spencer’s ear. He grinned.

The football players were next, breaking through the banner and running onto the basketball court, before milling around trying to figure out how to sit down without disturbing the rows of folding chairs. Gabriel was in the middle of the pack, wearing a football jersey like all of the rest of them, but I recognized him by his hair, floppy and loose in his eyes, and by the fact that among football players was the only time Gabriel seemed small. He took a seat in the second row, and when he glanced up at the bleachers, Spencer and I waved. He smiled, but didn’t wave back. They weren’t supposed to.

After a routine by the cheerleaders, the principal gave a speech about how important school spirit was for our student athletes, and one of the coaches talked about how we were definitely going to win against our rival New Berlin, and then it was time for the announcement of the Homecoming Court, which was really all most of the other kids cared about.

Merri came out from the front row of the bleachers. He had on his Benowa High School Golf Team jacket, which was the right sartorial choice, of course, but also made Spencer and I snicker behind our hands. Merri was all about school spirit.

“Hi everyone,” he said, smiling. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Meriwether Beryl.”

“We know, Merri!” Someone in front shouted affectionately. The crowd chuckled.

“He looks good,” I whispered to Spencer, who nodded. Merri was a school nerd, and he seemed at home behind the podium addressing twelve hundred students and teachers, smooth and polished and not nervous at all. Public speaking wasn’t a particular fear of mine, but still, I was impressed.

Merri continued. “As Chair of the Student Council Activities Committee, it’s my pleasure to announce the members of the Homecoming Court.”

He ran through the girls first, a list of the usual suspects. By the time he finished the names, there were three cheerleaders (including Angela, Gabriel’s ex-girlfriend), the Student Council president, and two girl jocks in an awkward line to his left.

Gabriel was third on the list of guys, introduced as “my little brother” which made the crowd chuckle again. At 5’9”, Merri was shorter than me, the only one of his family to take after their petite mother. When Gabriel passed Merri, he paused to sling an arm around Merri’s shoulders and grin at the crowd’s laughter.

“How does it feel dating high school royalty?” Spencer murmured.

“Weird,” I admitted. I was a little surprised. Gabriel had been popular the whole time I’d known him, but seeing him in line with the fricken Homecoming Court alongside cheerleaders and jocks poked at a tender spot inside of me. That guy down there was my boyfriend. In six short months, who had I become?

Merri finished his speech with a flourish—“ladies and gentlemen, your Homecoming Court,” he said, swooping his index card dramatically—and the crowd went wild with whistles and claps and excitement, like the kids down there were actual princes and princesses, instead of people you could see in the hallway or class or the bathroom every day.

The principal stepped in to remind everyone there was still another hour left in the school day and she expected everyone to be in class in fifteen minutes, and then it was, mercifully, over. Spencer headed to class, but I waited until most of the kids cleared out, then picked my way down the stairs to Gabriel.

He stood near the podium with some of the other members of the newly-minted Court, hands in his pockets, chatting with Angela.

“Congratulations.” I patted him on the arm and tried my best to sound like I meant it and wasn’t making fun of him. “And you, too, Angela. Congratulations.”

She smiled, a fake but polite smile. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m super excited.” She touched Gabriel’s sleeve. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “See ya.”

“See ya, Angela!” I called after her. To her credit, she did wave back.

“I’m not talking to her later,” Gabriel said. “Just so you know.”

“Promise?” I socked him in the arm. “You know I’m not jealous of her, right?”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Really? Not even a little? She’s very pretty.”

“You’re very annoying.” I grabbed his hand, tugging him in the general direction of the cafeteria. “Buy me a soda before class.”

“You only like me for my money,” he said.

“It’s more your super sweet ass, but your money will do. Come on.”

The truth was I wasn’t jealous of Angela at all. Envious of her beautiful hair that fell in a silky ponytail, for sure—my hair was too curly to ever be so smooth—but not jealous. If anything, I felt a little sorry for her. She had stumbled onto Gabriel’s secret without understanding what it was, and had broken up with him because of it. Her second thoughts about dumping someone as sweet and hot as Gabriel didn’t bother me; they made sense. And she had tried to warn me about how strange he was when I was new and had no one to watch out for me. As far as I was concerned, Angela and I were good.

Walking down the hall, hand-in-hand with my attractive and devoted boyfriend, I realized that my whole life was good. School was okay, I was getting along with my parents, I had Gabriel. It wasn’t perfect — I felt bad for Jason and whatever was going on with Spencer worried me a little — but it was good, and for a moment I thought that all the trouble and danger of the spring was behind me and it would be smooth sailing from now until graduation.

Honestly, I should have known better.

*****

The Fourth Horseman, excerpt 3

2020-04-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

In which shit starts to get real.

Previous excerpts can be found here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2

*****

Since we were going to call the Circle, I went right home instead of watching football practice. My parents and I had healed the rift that brought us out to Benowa in the first place, but my mother still preferred it when I was home when she got home. Even better if the dog was walked and fed and I had dinner started when she came through the door. My mother had high standards, but she was not above a little bribery.

She knew something was up, though, when she saw me chopping celery for homemade dressing.

"Okay, what do you want?" she asked, hanging her coat on the hook next to the steps.

"What?" I made my best innocent face, but I was lying my butt off and the woman knew it. "Fine." I sighed. "I want to go over to Gabriel's after dinner. If it's okay with you. I'm done with my homework. I'm making pork chops for dinner. I'll be home by ten thirty.”

"Nine thirty,” my mother said, and my heart leapt. She was letting me go without drama.

“Ten,” I countered.

"If you take Brady."

"Deal." I held out my hand but my mother shook her head.

"Don't touch others or your face while doing food prep." She crutched her way over to the kitchen table, her workbag swinging from one shoulder. I didn’t know how she carried that thing on crutches, but she resisted whenever my dad or I tried to take it from her. "That's a fundamental rule."

"Thanks, Mom," I said. The minute she turned her back, I fake sneezed into the crook of my elbow.

"Not funny," my mother said without missing a step, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

*****

The Beryls lived a few blocks from me, a walk familiar through repetition—Gabriel and I had made the trip hundreds of times a day over the summer—but in the fast-descending twilight, I couldn’t help but remember the first time. I’d been running, chased by a monster I ultimately had to kill. I glanced over my shoulder now, but Morgan was well and truly gone.

Brady, who’d been with me the first walk, was unplagued by demons. He walked out in front of me, tail high, nose to the ground. The best part of moving here in those early dark days had been how happy Brady was. His people were home more, he had a yard to explore, and the neighborhood kids knew his name and would come give him pets when we went by. Brady was living his best life.

My human best friend was not so lucky, though. I pulled out my phone and dialed him, counting the rings aloud. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four—”

“Jason’s Pizza and Shoe Emporium,” he answered.

“My mother asked me if I wanted to go on the pill,” I said.

I heard a gasp, then a clunk, then Jason’s laughter from far away. After a minute he came back on. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped. “She what?”

“I know!” I said. “She’s making me an appointment.”

“You can’t just spring news like that, Suzy. I dropped my phone!”

“I thought you’d enjoy it.”

“I do, indeed. Do you think she means it?”

I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “It was her idea, so I guess.”

“And then you can boink like bunnies!” Jason exclaimed. “Do me a favor and take some pictures when you do. You don’t have to be in them.”

“Uh huh. That sounds totally appropriate.”

“Tell him it’s because you want to remember the moment.”

“Jesus, you’re a perv.”

“And you’re a prude.”

“I’m a prude because I won’t send you naked pictures of my boyfriend?”

“Yes! A true friend would do anything for me!”

“I saved your life,” I pointed out.

“You’re the reason my life was even in danger!”

“Okay, you introduced me to Morgan. So, technically, you’re the reason that I’m the reason your life was in danger.”

Jason thought for a second. “Fair,” he admitted. “So do you think you will?”

“Send you nudes of Gabriel? No.”

“No, girl. Although think about that. Do you think you’re going to bang the delicious Clark Kent?”

I glanced around, like anyone cared about my answer. A couple of little kids rode their bikes in circles in a driveway a couple of houses down, but otherwise my secret seemed safe. “I mean, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. I really like him—”

“He’s great. And you know I don’t say that lightly.”

“I know!”

“And he’s hot.”

I sighed again. “That I definitely know.”

“And now you’re parentally sanctioned, so why not?”

I felt like all I could do was sigh. “I don’t know,” I told Jason. “Here’s the thing: I’m stuck here. The Circle, the powers, all of it. I don’t know if I want to add sex on top of everything else. It’s like my whole life is him and his family and maybe I don’t want to be so hooked in.”

“Okay,” Jason said. “But you might have thought of that before you started dating him.”

“It was all messed up!” I said. “Plus . . . I really like him.”

“He is super great,” Jason said. “And hot. But most importantly great.”

“What would you do?” I asked. Asking Jason for relationship advice was a spectacularly bad idea—his love life was always a complete mess—but that’s what best friends are for, to give you advice, even if it’s horrible, and then support you whether you follow it or not.

“I would hit it, for sure,” Jason said. “Worry about the complications later. I mean, who knows? Maybe he’ll be so wonderful all of your concerns will melt away.”

“Or so awful I have to invent a spell to forget.”

“Or maybe you’ll be so bad that he breaks up with you while the bed is still warm. Problem solved!”

“Shut up,” I said. “It’s actually complicated.”

“Yep,” Jason said. “Look, seriously, Suzy, do what feels right. You like him, he likes you . . . if you want to do it, do it. If you have doubts, don’t. You don’t know what happens in the future. Wait, you can’t tell the future, right?”

I chuckled. “No,” I said. “But Merri can.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jason said. “You guys are too weird for me. Just ask him for advice, then.”

“Nah,” I said, like I hadn’t already considered it. “That’s a little too creepy and weird, even for me.”

“Speaking of weird,” Jason said. “How is my little freak Spencer?”

“Still little,” I said. “He’s not even fifteen until next April.”

“Ugg,” Jason said. “Aging takes too long. Can you fix that?”

“I cannot, and I wouldn’t even if I could, you perv.”

“Fine. I don’t even know what use your magical powers are if they can’t help your friends.”

“Ha!” I laughed. “Subjecting Spencer to your advances is not helping him.”

“No, it’s helping me,” Jason said. “I am having the most unbelievable dry spell. No one cute lives in Milwaukee.”

“There are plenty of cute guys there,” I said. “You’ve just worked your way through most of them and now you’re fishing for jail bait.”

“I guess,” he said, but his sigh was tinged with real emotion. His last serious boyfriend, Ethan, had moved away at the beginning of summer, and not sort-of away, like I had when I moved from Milwaukee to the suburbs, but Real Away, to Arizona.

“Have you talked to him,” I asked.

“A couple times,” he said. “We keep forgetting about time zones.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Oh my God! I almost forgot to tell you—Viva’s pregnant!”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, my breath gone. Viva was our age, one of our friends, a gorgeous Hispanic girl with a sharp tongue and a 4.3 GPA. She was the last person after myself I could imagine pregnant. “For real?”

“For. Real. She won’t tell us who the father is, so you know it’s one of those college guys she bangs, and she says she’s keeping it.”

“Holy . . . Wow.”

“I told you it was big news!”

“Do her parents know?”

“She told them last week,” he said. “They flipped. She’ll have the baby before she’s ungrounded.”

I tried to laugh, but I didn’t really feel it. A baby. She was my age. Suddenly, sex with Gabriel didn’t seem like such a great idea.

“Yeah,” Jason said in response to my silence. “It freaked me out, too.”

“Freaked out isn’t even the word for it,” I said.

“Come visit me this weekend and we can speculate about who the father is.”

“I’ll ask.” I wasn’t grounded anymore, but I wasn’t exactly free; my parents still had to approve all my plans. I certainly wouldn’t be telling them about Viva if I wanted to be let out of the house anytime soon.

“Cool, let me know.”

“Totally. Ciao.”

“Do you have to go?” he asked.

“I’m on my way to Gabriel’s,” I said.

Jason sighed dramatically. “You get a boyfriend and forget all about me.”

“I’m sorry, who is this again?”

He snorted. “Bitch. Let me know about this weekend. Ciao.”

I pressed END. Jason was lonely, but beyond hanging out with him and calling him and texting him, there was nothing I could do. I wondered if this was how he’d felt when I’d been calling him and calling him last spring, leaking my sadness all over him. Probably. “Poor Jason,” I told Brady, who turned one ear at the sound of my voice, but otherwise kept moving.

I was tying him up on the Beryl’s porch—Gabriel’s mother didn’t allow dogs in the house—when the front door opened.

“—told you why, Ana!” Clarissa, Anastase’s girlfriend. When she saw me she whirled around to Anastase, who was right behind her, wearing jeans and nothing else. “Great,” she told him. “Just great.”

I watched her rush down the front steps to her car. If she wasn’t already crying, she was about to judging from the fumble of keys and the slam of the car door behind her.

“Trouble in paradise?” I asked Anastase as she roared off.

“Paradise? I wouldn’t know.” He held the door open for me.

In the six months I’d known the Beryls, I’d had maybe three conversations with Clarissa. We’d never gotten along, in part because we never tried. Anastase had made his interest in me known, even after Gabriel and I were together, and Clarissa’s jealousy was compounded by the fact that I was an Elemental and she was not. She knew what he was, what we all were, but she had no power. It must be hard, I thought, to be on the outside of your boyfriend’s clique looking in, but she wasn’t interested in accepting my sympathy, so I didn’t spend any time trying to give it.

“They’re ready?” I hung up my jacket in the hall closet and took out my robe. “I have to be home by ten.”

“Pretty close.” He shoved his hands in his jean pockets and leaned up against the wall. Unlike Gabriel, Anastase wasn’t an athlete. He was thin, almost painfully so, the impression of his lower ribs obvious through his skin, his collarbones jutting. Standing up against the wall with his hair in his eyes, he looked like a model, one of the party boys of New York who showed clothes because he was basically built like a hanger.

And he just stood there, his eyes on me, saying nothing. He observed me a lot, and sometimes it was flattering and sometimes annoying. This time, it was on the annoying side of the dial.

“Did you want something?” I asked.

A smile, slanted, ironic. Definitely annoying. “No.”

“Great.” I went into the hall bathroom and shut the door behind me. After a second, I heard him move off.

Gabriel had been my first friend in Benowa, but Anastase had been the first person I noticed, and I’d spent weeks crushing on him, waiting for him to notice me back. He had, but he hadn’t approached me, and by the time things were all figured out, with the powers and the danger we were in and my feelings about Gabriel, the whole situation had been hopelessly complicated. I had chosen Gabriel, and I didn’t regret the decision, because Gabriel was probably the best human being I had ever known, but there were some moments when I wished he wasn’t related to someone who matched my fantasy of my ideal mate so exactly.

I took off my clothes, folding them neatly into my bag in the reverse order I would need them later. We had robes for the ceremony, but besides them, we wore nothing. Merri said some Elementals called their circles totally nude (sky clad, they called it, which I thought was both dorky and beautiful), but those circles weren’t located in a suburb where they could be easily observed. I, for one, was grateful we had robes.

The robes were black silk, like choir robes, except for the embroidery around the hems. Mine hung down to the tops of my feet and the front of the sleeve hit at my wrist, now. It had been too big the first time, but since then Gabriel’s mother had hemmed it to the right length. I had stitched the designs around the bottom hem in colored thread. There weren’t very many of them, yet, because I was a terrible and indifferent seamstress, but I had started by sewing the symbol for each of the Beryls on the robe in the general place they stood when we were in the Circle.

Once I had my robe on and adjusted, I opened the bathroom door. Gabriel sat on the bench in the hallway in his own robe. He smiled when he saw me. “Ana says you have to be home by ten,” he said.

“Correct.” I stepped between his knees. He hugged me, arms around my thighs, face pressed into my belly, and it was delicious, the feel of the silk robe against my skin and his warm hands through it, even though he was careful to keep them low on the backs of my legs. I slid my hand through his dark hair.

“Okay!” He leaned back, his tone of voice telling me I wasn’t the only one thinking about being naked under our robes. “Let go of me, woman!”

I stepped back, smiling, and took his hand. “Come on.”

The rest of them were already out in the growing dark. The Beryls’ backyard was mostly hidden by the high privacy fence and a gigantic tree, but it was still better to do this kind of thing in the darkness, where someone peering out their attic window wouldn’t be able to see much.

We all took our places in formation, them gathered around me, Spencer to the right and Merri to the left, Anastase in front of me and Gabriel behind.

“Ready,” Anastase asked us, and then nodded to me.

I took a deep breath and extended my hands, placing them on the chests of Merri and Spencer over their robes, feeling the independent beats of their hearts. I could tell them apart by touch in a dark room if I had to. After a second, Gabriel placed his hand firmly between my shoulder blades. Then, finally, Anastase, his left palm resting against my sternum in the V of my robe. I took another deep breath.

“I am Anastase,” Anastase said, looking into my eyes. “The First of the Beryl Circle. I am the master of Fire, and the South, and summer, and all that burns. I call the Circle.” His hand grew incrementally warmer on my skin.

Under my left hand, I felt Merri clear his throat. “I am Meriwether,” he said. “The voice of the Water and the West. I am the fall and the waterfall. I call the Circle.”

Behind me, Gabriel spoke. “I am Gabriel,” he said. “I am the power of the North, of the Earth, and of the winter that gives us peace. I call the Circle.”

And, finally, Spencer, under my right hand. “I am Spencer, child of the Air,” he said. “I am the light of the East, the dawn, and the spring. I call the Circle.”

Then it was my turn. “I am Suzanne,” I said. “The Fifth of the Beryl Circle. I am the crossroads, where all directions meet and become one. I call the Circle.”

It happened the same way every time, but it never failed to thrill me, the click of the connection. I could feel the power humming through me, through all of us, like a power line. If we had something to do, some spell or task, we would do it now, but on most days, like this one, the Circle was only to strengthen the bond between us, making it (and us) more and more powerful each time. I sighed, relaxing into it. It usually didn’t last long, a minute or two, but while it—

Merri jerked away, gasping, almost screaming, and the Circle snapped.

“Merri!” Anastase shouted, but I could only fall to the grass in pain. I felt like I’d been slammed in the ribs with the world’s largest rubber band and I clutched at my chest, hardly able to breathe. Gabriel hunched over on his knees, panting for air. The rest of them, like me, were on the ground, hands over their hearts.

“What was that?” Spencer gasped, rubbing his chest through his robe.

“No, nothing.” Merri shook his head. Behind his glasses, his eyes brimmed with tears, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“C’mon.” I reached for him, the pain so bad I could barely lift my arm. “No secrets.”

He shook my hand off his shoulder. “It’s nothing.”

“You fell out of the Circle for nothing,” Anastase asked. “Because it’s fun?”

Merri sighed, wiped his face. “It doesn’t mean anything.” It was his standard warning, every time he was about to tell us one of his visions. The power of Water includes clairvoyance, but from the way Merri talked about it, it seemed more like guessing.

“We know.” Gabriel knelt on the grass beside me. “The future isn’t fixed.”

“Exactly!” Merri said. “So there’s no need to talk about it.”

“Merri,” Spencer said gently, his way of warning Merri that either he had to tell or Spencer would. There were no secrets when you lived with a telepath.

“Fine.” Merri hitched his knees up and put his arms around them. The dim light from the kitchen window flashed off his glasses, but the rest of his face was lost in the dark. My ribcage throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

Merri cleared his throat. “I want to remind everyone before I say anything else that clairvoyance is as much an art as a science, and the visions are often—”

“Merri!” Spencer and I said in unison.

“Okay!” Merri said. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I saw our Circle breaking.”

“How?” Gabriel asked. “What happened?”

“It’s hard to describe,” Merri said. “We were all here, in the Circle, and then some of us weren’t.”

“Which of us,” Anastase asked.

Merri shook his head again. “It changed,” he said. “It was Gabriel, then Spencer, then it was me, and then I went dark, and then I fell.”

I groped for Gabriel’s hand. When a person went dark in one of Merri’s visions, it meant they were dead, all possible futures erased. “Going dark” was death.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Spencer said. “Right, Ana?”

But Anastase was never the reassuring one. “It doesn’t sound fine.”

“It felt . . . I was gone,” Merri said. “I don’t have a better explanation. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll look again, though,” Gabriel said. “You’ll try to figure it out?”

It was an easy question—of course Merri would try to repeat the vision, to figure out what it might mean—but Merri stayed silent for longer than I liked.

“Of course,” he said finally. His hand went to his chest. “But . . . not tonight.”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Spencer said, rising to his full height. “Maybe it’s just about you guys graduating and people growing up.” But he was lying to himself and to us and none of us were convinced.

Anastase stood, too, but Gabriel and I stayed on the grass, huddled together. “You don’t know anything else?” he asked Merri.

Merri shook his head. “It came to me all of a sudden. I told you everything I saw.”

“But I was first,” Gabriel said. “You’re sure I was first.”

Merri grimaced. “I don’t know if that means anything, though. We all vanished one at a time.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll look again later. I’m sorry.”

He headed for the house, followed by Anastase and Spencer, who twined together as they walked, their heads close in conversation.

“Hey.” I rubbed Gabriel’s arm. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I don’t think it will.” Gabriel watched as Merri slid the glass door closed behind them.

“C’mon,” I said. “Sure it will. How do you know?”

“Because.” He met my eyes. “If it were fine, Merri wouldn’t have seen it in the first place.”

*****

end excerpt 3

Jay Hears A Song: "Cuts You Up" by Peter Murphy

2020-04-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

If I could only pick one album as the soundtrack to The Fifth, it would be Deep by Peter Murphy (and not just because Peter Murphy was the original inspiration for Anastase -- more on that, later). Murphy is the former lead singer of Bauhaus, so it's not surprising that the album is dark and moody and mystical. But unlike a lot of music in the genre, Deep isn't sad or depressing . . . at least not entirely. :) One of my favorite songs on the album is this one, "Cuts You Up," which is really a very representative song for the whole album.

I listened to this album incessantly for several years, so much so that parts of it made its way into The Fifth, like these lyrics:

I find you in the morning
after dreams of distant signs.
You pour yourself over me
like the sun through the blinds.

Which some of you may recognize as very similar to the scene where Suzanne wakes up from the cantilever ceremony. ::whistles in the dark::

Also, is this the most Anastase Beryl video, ever. For real.

The Fourth Horseman, excerpt 2

2020-03-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Here's the second excerpt from The Fourth Horseman, the beginning of Chapter 2, in which Suzanne makes googly eyes.

*****

Chapter Two

When I came to Benowa High School in the middle of spring semester, fresh out of rehab, I hated the place. The kids were mean and stupid and boring, and I didn't fit in with any of them. School was a time-suck I had to suffer through until I could get back to my real life, even if that real life involved me sitting up in my room with my dog. At least my dog was cute.

I fully expected to feel the same when I started this fall as a junior, but things had changed. Maybe they would have changed anyway because I was no longer new, just another student like everyone else, but I thought it was mostly because I was now associated with Gabriel and Merri Beryl.

Gabriel was popular because he was a jock, that simple. He was more popular because he was good looking and nice and because his power as an Earth allowed him to make people like him, but primarily he was an athlete who had already lettered in two sports as a junior. He was beloved.

Merri, Gabriel's other older brother, was popular because he was a joiner. As a senior, he was on Student Council (chair of the Activities Committee), golf team, yearbook, debate, and probably a few others—Merri had a thousand activities all happening all the time. He was one of those students who made sure the administrative work of school activities got done. Sometimes I thought Merri had taken one look at Anastase's anti-social life and said "I am going to do the opposite of that." Just knowing him made me tired.

Merri was always trying to include me in things, inviting me places, introducing me to people. "This is my brother's girlfriend Suzanne," he would say, hooking an arm around me and dragging me toward the drum major of the marching band, or the captain of his debate team, or a cheerleader, or member of the yearbook staff or chess club. And I would say hello and make small talk for the briefest possible amount of time until I could wriggle away, but it was too late: I had been introduced. After that, some of them would say hi to me in the hallway, or talk to me a little bit when we were in the same class, or walk with me if they ran into me in the hall.

"You're making me have friends," I complained to Merri one lunch period, after he'd called a girl from student newspaper over to our lunch table and made me say hi to her.

He looked up from his plate of macaroni and cheese, smiling. "It's good for you," he said.

"No, it's not," I protested.

"You can't live your life in a bubble." He took a bite.

"Irony." I made a face. Becoming an Elemental and joining the Beryl Circle meant that I couldn't move permanently away from Benowa, ever. I could leave, but I would have to come back within two or three months, or I would die. The restriction hadn't made much of a difference to me, yet—I was in high school and would be here until I graduated anyway—but it would.

"Right?" he asked, smiling. "Hey, you're coming to the assembly Friday, yes?"

"There's an assembly?"

Merri rolled his eyes. "You're annoying."

"Yes, we're coming," I said. "I think we're, like, contractually obligated to come or something."

"You act like it's a trip to the dentist."

"Whee!" I twirled a finger near my ear.

"It's the announcement of the Homecoming Court," Merri said. "So it's important that you're there. You can't skip."

I stared at him in shock and horror. No. No. It was not possible that I—

"Calm down." He shook his head at me. "Not you. Gabriel."

"Ohthankgod." I slumped in relief. "I almost died there."

"Why would you be nominated?" Merri asked. "You don't do anything."

"Yes, thank you, exactly the point!" I said. “But it would be like you to try to torture me."

"It would, wouldn't it?" Merri smiled. "Where is his royal highness?"

"He's coming. He had to stop at his—ta da!" I pointed as Gabriel came through the door trailed by a clump of baby jocks, junior varsity players who wanted to look cool by talking to Gabriel in front of the whole lunch room. He saw us and waved.

I had learned from knowing Gabriel that popularity was hard. Back in Milwaukee, I had been one of the outsiders, a member of a clique that thought popular kids were jokes and fools. But I had been wrong. To be popular, really popular, at least in Benowa, in addition to money and good looks, you had to be good at something. Usually that something was sports, but it could be other activities, as long as something sports-related was involved. Merri, for example, was on the golf team.

But being good at things wasn't enough. There were plenty of kids on teams who no one besides their own friends really cared about. To be popular, you also had to be involved with other people. You had to know about them, hear about them, talk about them. You had to care.

There were two ways to do that—you could show you liked people and wanted them to be happy and to like you, or you could hate most people and use them as the butts of your jokes.

In other words, the only people who were really popular in Benowa were either pretty nice, or pretty mean. Gabriel, obviously, was the former.

"What's up?" He slid onto the bench next to me and kissed my cheek. I leaned up against his shoulder. I'm not huge on public displays of affection, but as long as there wasn't any tongue, I was willing to participate. And Gabriel always smelled good. We had learned about pheromones in chemistry class, and how humans had evolved away from using our senses of smell to seek out willing mates, but our teacher said even though we didn't use pheromones like other animals did, there were still people we would meet in our lives who would just smell right to us. Gabriel smelled right to me.

"Merri wants to make sure we're going to the assembly on Friday," I told him.

"We are." He squeezed me. "I made her promise."

"I need to make some new friends," I said. "Then I wouldn't have to hang out with you losers."

"That reminds me,” Merri said, lowering his voice. "After Gabriel gets done with practice Ana wants to call the Circle. Can you do it?"

"Sure," I said. "After 7:30, though. I have to eat dinner at home."

"Eight?" Merri offered.

"Sounds good," I said. "Gabriel?"

"Yep." He stood up. "I'm getting pizza. You want?"

"Nope, I ate." I gestured to my mostly empty tray. Without being asked, Gabriel picked it up and, on his way over to the pizza line, set the tray in the rack where all the dirty trays went, because that was the type of person he was.

"You can act tough all you want, Suzanne Parker," Merri said, "but you were just making googly eyes at your boyfriend and you know it."

"Shut up," I told him. "They weren't googly."

But they were. They totally were.

Character Post: Gabriel Beryl

2020-03-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

NOTE: This post contains spoilers for The Fifth.


Taylor Miller/Buzzfeed

Obviously, I didn't base Gabriel on Noah Centineo, because Gabriel has been around for a lot longer than Noah. But the first time I saw Noah in To All The Boys I Loved Before, I recognized him right away, because his affable, charming vibe in that movie is very much Gabriel's vibe. They are also physically similar--tall, athletic, dark haired--although Gabriel has light eyes and isn't as goofy as Noah is in a lot of photos. Noah is not the model for Gabriel, but he is a close physical approximation, and Peter Kavinsky (Noah's character in the movie) behaves very similarly to how I see Gabriel.

Gabriel is one of those rare people who seems to have it all, and pretty much does. He's attractive, he's popular, he's nice, he loves his mom -- he's fucking sickening in his perfection, honestly. It's interesting to me write such a good character, because (a) I myself am nowhere near as good as Gabriel and (b) good characters are often hard to make interesting (something I hope I've overcome!).

And if Gabriel was just hanging out by himself, living his life, I'm afraid I wouldn't be very interested in him. But, fortunately, Gabriel has two secrets. First, he's an Elemental, which, you know, pretty important secret. But an even more important secret, honestly, is that, when it comes to his family, Gabriel is incredibly insecure. To the outside world, he is the most successful of all his brothers, but inside his house, he is the least of them, and he feels that acutely. He's constantly torn between his desire to please his brothers, especially Anastase, and his desire to be his own person. And, of course, Suzanne exacerbates that.

This photo is very Gabriel.

Gabriel is an Earth, so his powers include the ability to move physical things and people emotionally. Ironically, he doesn't need to use the mental side of his powers much, because he's pretty likable in and of himself. He's also the least naturally talented Elemental in his family, which increases his feelings of insecurity. Of his brothers, he's closest to Merri, who shares his social facility and his engagement with the outside world. He's also the closest of all his brothers to their mother, maybe because she, too, is an outsider in the house.

The key feeling I want readers to get from Gabriel is a sense of safety. Gabriel is a legitimately good guy. That's part of the reason Suzanne is so pissed when he reveals his power, because it's a betrayal of what she sees him as (and what he really is, honestly). She thought she was getting to know someone good, for a change, and instead she got lies and deceit. But Gabriel is actually safe. Unlike Morgan, or Anastase, or Suzanne's original boyfriend, Myke, Gabriel is reliable and wants to do the right thing. He might not always know what that is, but unlike a lot of other people (including Suzanne) he will always try.

The Fourth Horseman, excerpt 1

2020-03-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, everybody, here we go! Below is the first excerpt from The Fourth Horseman, my sequel to my book The Fifth. This version is close to final, but it isn't written in stone, so please feel free to ask questions, point out issues, comment on the things you're seeing. I am very interested in hearing all of it!

*****

Chapter One

You would think having magical powers would make life easier. I’d thought so, even though the Beryls had tried to tell me, in their boy way, that it wasn’t true, magic didn’t solve all problems like it did in the movies. I hadn’t heard them. In my defense, I’d been distracted by my mother’s potential death, but I don’t think I would have heard them on my best day.

Now that I’ve experienced them both, I think magic is a lot like romantic love; it changes less and takes more than we’ve been led to believe.

“Yes, very deep,” Jason said when I unloaded this theory on him during a phone call one afternoon in September. “You should major in philosophy.”

“Better than majoring in smartass,” I told him.

“mmm, agree to disagree. Does this mean Clark Kent isn’t as perfect as we thought?”

I glanced down at the practice field, where my boyfriend Gabriel was running around with ten of his teammates, and cupped my hand around the phone like he could hear me where I sat at the top of the bleachers. “Nope, still perfect. Which may be the problem.”

“It creeps you out, doesn’t it?” Jason asked. “He’s so nice and seriously hot and how could there be literally nothing wrong with him? You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“I thought it already had!”

“Fair,” Jason said. “What are you going to do about it?”

I considered my answer, but before I could speak, I spotted a tall thin blond boy climbing across the bleachers toward me. “I gotta go,” I told Jason. “Spencer’s here.”

“Tell the baby chick I said hi.” Jason said. “And call me later. There’s big gossip you want to hear.”

“Will do. Ciao.”

“Ciao.”

Spencer clambered over the last few benches and sat down next to me, folding himself up like origami. He’d had a growth spurt over the summer and was now a jumble of knees and elbows almost taller than me. “Jason?” he asked.

“He says hi.”

The corner of Spencer’s mouth quirked up, half a smile. “Hi,” he murmured. They’d met a couple times since the night at the Point, once when Jason came out to visit me and once when I took all the Beryls except Anastase down to the lakefront. Spencer didn’t talk about it, but he had a crush on Jason, the way you crush on the older siblings of your friends. “Did I miss anything?”

“Like I know.”

On the field, the players ran around in predetermined patterns in time to the coaches’ whistles. It didn’t seem fun at all, although Gabriel assured me it was. My opinion, shared by Spencer and most of the rest of Gabriel’s family, was football was a dumb waste of time. But Gabriel liked it, so I supported him by attending his practices at least once or twice a week like the other football girlfriends. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” I told Spencer.

“I know.” Another thing Spencer didn’t talk about was how his first semester up at the high school was going. I suspected it wasn’t great for him, mostly because it was the only explanation I could find for why he would hang out and watch football practice with me instead of doing anything else in the entire world.

“How was school?” I asked.

He shot me a look. “Fine, thanks.”

“Do you have homework?”

“Are you my mother?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, were you trying to watch the practice?” I grabbed him around the shoulders, and shook him affectionately. “Am I bugging you?”

“Yeh-eh-eh-eh-es!” He shoved himself away from me, grinning. Spencer was the youngest of four Beryls, and the most powerful, and I thought his brothers sometimes treated him too carefully, like he was breakable, so I tried not to.

One of the other football girlfriends, a senior, turned and glared at us. I stared back, daring her to say something, but she didn’t. None of them ever did. They weren’t big fans of mine, the other girlfriends, maybe because of my irreverent attitude about football, but more likely because before me Gabriel had dated Angela, a pretty brunette cheerleader. I am the opposite of a cheerleader. I am sarcastic and sly, not interested in school sports or pep, and none of them could figure out what Gabriel saw in me. But none of them crossed me, either.

“I’m bored,” I murmured to Spencer. “Aren’t you bored?”

“No,” Spencer said. “. . . maybe a little.”

“Wanna do something about it?” I asked.

“Like what?”

I held out my hand.

He laced his fingers between mine and tipped his head against mine like he was telling me a secret. “I am Spencer,” he whispered in my ear. “I am the air and the east, the fourth of the Beryl Circle. Hear me.”

I smiled. “I am Suzanne, the Fifth,” I murmured back. “I am the center and the crossroads. Hear me.” The wind lifted, blowing the fluffy white clouds into a swollen, darkened heap. Spencer’s hand clenched mine. He was the Air, master of the wind and electricity, and my job was to be the booster that added to his power. “Now,” I said.

Spencer snapped his fingers and lightning flickered in the clouds, so close the grumble of thunder was pretty much immediate.

“Nice,” I said.

Spencer smiled, turning his head away like nothing was happening, but I could feel the tingle of his power through my palm.

On the field, coaches craned their necks at the sky. Rain didn’t matter to football practice, but lightning definitely did. Spencer snapped his fingers three more times in rapid succession and the coaches’ whistles went off like sirens.

I held up a hand for Spencer to slap. When he did, lightning stuck the goalpost at the far end of the field.

“Whoa!”

Spencer laughed. “Whoops!”

The bleachers below us cleared out, girls clattering down the metal stairs, arms flailing. The players on the field were moving, too, jogging toward the school in clumps, their rigid formations broken. One of them trailed behind the crowd, looking up into the bleachers like he knew what we had done.

I waved, and Gabriel waved back.

We met up on the track between the practice field and the school. Gabriel had taken off his helmet and his dark hair was a tangled mess around his face, like a model doing a sports shoot. Even sweaty and gross he was infuriatingly good looking.

“Hey, troublemakers.” He gave me a one-armed hug, unable to kiss me because the coaches didn’t approve of PDA.

“The goal post was an accident,” Spencer admitted.

“You know it just means we practice indoors,” Gabriel said. “I don’t get out of it.”

“No.” I hooked my arm through his. “But I do.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Next time just leave, okay?” He paused before opening the gym door. “Seriously, you shouldn’t do that. Especially in public.”

“Yes, dad,” I said.

“Yeah, dad,” Spencer repeated.

Gabriel pointed a finger at him. “Don’t,” he said. “You know better.”

Spencer made a face, but sighed. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay.” Gabriel held open the door for us. “I’ll call you later,” he told me, and then he was gone through the double doors to the field house, back to the world of whistles and grown men shouting.

“He’s right,” Spencer said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “But who wants to be right all the time? C’mon. Let’s go find Anastase.”

We found Anastase exactly where he should have been: in the biology classroom, hunched over a microscope. He’d had to come back to high school, even though he’d been a senior last year, because he skipped so much class he didn’t have the credits to graduate. He’d done most of the make-up work over the summer, but he still had science credits left so he came up to the high school in the afternoon for biology and then stayed after to do labs. He hoped to be done by Thanksgiving.

We stopped in the doorway, waiting for him to notice us. Ana stared into the microscope, one hand delicately turning the knob. In the afternoon light, he looked like a painting of a student, all angles and fair skin against his black henley.

Will this ever go away, I wondered. I cleared my throat.

Anastase lifted his head. He didn’t smile—most of Ana’s smiles were reserved to convey gloating or sarcasm—but his expression brightened somehow, and he waved us in.

“Mr. Simmons is teaching drivers ed,” he said, an explanation for why he was alone, holding out one arm for Spencer to curve under and hug him.

“How goes it?” I peered at the slide but without magnification it looked like a smear.

“It goes,” Anastase said. “The lightning was you?”

“Just some fun,” I said.

“We hit a goal post!” Spencer added.

Anastase lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing. It was rare he and Gabriel agreed on something, and they were right—we shouldn’t have done it—but we never did anything fun with the power, and no one had been hurt.

“When will you be done here?” I asked. “We’re about to head home.”

“Give me ten minutes,” he said. “I need to finish this.”

“Cool.” I hopped up onto an adjacent lab table to wait, my legs swinging free, and Anastase went back to work.

He’d cut his blond hair very short in the spring for magical reasons and it was finally starting to grow out to a flattering length again. The back was still clipped tight, a classic boy’s cut, but the front flopped over his forehead past his blue and green eyes. The combination of his blondness and his black t-shirt made him seem foreign and stylish.

And I needed to stop thinking about him, especially when Spencer was close enough to read my mind. Maybe visiting Anastase had been a bad idea.

After a few minutes, he closed his notebook and removed the slide from the microscope, slotting it into a little tray full of other slides and placing the whole tray back on a shelf in a cabinet at the back of the room. Then he turned off the microscope and covered it with its case, making sure it was lined up properly. Finally, he went to wash his hands at the station next to the door.

“Ready?” He tossed a paper towel into the trash bin.

“Have you ever thought of becoming a scientist?” I jumped down off the table.

Anastase glanced at me, amused. “No,” he said. “Why?”

“You seem really good at it,” I said.

“I’m good at a lot of things.” He smiled.

“Never mind,” I said. “Forget it.”

“I can make things out of nothing,” he said, snapping a flutter of moths into existence. “Why would I want to become a scientist?”

“I said never mind.” I brushed a moth off my shirt. Spencer came over from the window, where he’d been inspecting the specimens lined up in jars.

“What are you going to be?” he asked. He meant it casually, but Anastase made a face.

“Nothing if I don’t graduate high school,” he said.

“What about you?” I asked Spencer. Gabriel and Merri both planned to go to college, but Anastase and Spencer were so magical I couldn’t imagine them with jobs out in the world.

“I was thinking maybe something with math,” he said. “Like, an engineer.”

“An engineer.” Anastase closed the door behind us. “Really.”

Spencer shrugged. “Maybe. What about you, Suzanne?”

“No clue,” I said. Until six months ago, my only goal for the future had been getting out of Benowa, Wisconsin, but I had crossed over, become an Elemental with the Beryls, and that was no longer possible. “I haven’t really thought about it. Maybe I’ll become a Benowa cop and spend my days giving high school students tickets for failure to come to a complete stop.”

Spencer giggled. Anastase had gotten that exact ticket less than a week ago.

“Please do,” he said. “Then I’ll never get another one again.”

“I don’t know, sir.” I lowered my voice to Cop Voice. “I can’t be showing favoritism.”

“HA!” Anastase snorted, following us out the door into the bright sunlight. Our artificial rain clouds had returned to their natural fluffy white state, bright against high blue sky. “That’s all cops do. It’s the whole point of being a cop.”

A car passed us, honking, but I didn’t recognize it and Spencer and Anastase showed no sign either, lifting their heads and regarding it in the calm way animals regarded something they knew posed no danger to them. I wondered what we looked like to people passing by, me and the two blond boys. Did they think Anastase and I were a couple? Or, most likely, did they not think of us at all except to make sure we weren’t going to dart into the street in front of them?

That was how the Beryls had managed to hide what they were for so long, I realized; no one cared. Anastase was strange, sure, but he didn’t bother anyone and most of the kids at school were too wrapped up in their own psychodramas to give him a second glance. And the others weren’t unusual enough to warrant unwanted attention. It was only those few people who got close who realized none of the Beryls, not even Gabriel, were normal. Indifference was their camouflage.

I opened my mouth to say this, but shut it again. It was one of those things that would be obvious to them, and saying it would make me seem slow. This was the problem with joining a group formed essentially when Spencer was born—they had so much history I was only starting to catch up.

“We like when you try.” Spencer hooked his arm through mine.

“Stop doing that,” I told him.

“I can’t,” he answered. Of all the talents the Elementals possessed, Spencer’s telepathy was the one I wanted the most and the least at the same time.

“Not the listening,” I told him. “The answering.”

“Oh.” Spencer nodded. “Yeah, I probably should.”

“Are you coming in?” Anastase asked as we approached the front walk of their house.

I shook my head. I loved their house, and inside it I was free to express my new Elemental self, but without Gabriel there today it didn’t feel right. “I gotta get home.”

Anastase shrugged and headed up the walk. Spencer hugged me. “Sorry you won’t be joining us,” he said, and winked to let me know he knew why I wasn’t. I slapped him on the arm and headed toward home.

Fifteen minutes later, I was opening the kitchen screen door to find my golden retriever, Brady, waving his fluffy yellow tail and hopping back and forth at the top of the short staircase.

“Hi Brady! Hi puppy!” I opened the door and reached up to hug him. He smelled of clean dog and squirmed happily in my hug, panting in my face. Best greeting ever.

“Don’t get him all worked up,” my mother called from the kitchen. “He just spent ten minutes barking at things through the living room window.”

“Did you see something?” I asked Brady, but my power didn’t include the ability to read his mind (would the power even work on dogs? I’d have to ask Spencer) so there was no answer, just Brady grinning at me. “What did you see?”

“In or out, please,” my mother said. I came in, closing the door behind me loud enough for her to hear. Unlike Brady, my mother wasn’t always happy or excited to see me. She loved me, but her love was prickly and could be painful.

“You’re home early,” she said as I came into the kitchen. She sat at the table sorting through papers, her broken leg propped up on a chair.

“So are you,” I said. My mother was a professor at Marquette. She taught English and, because she worked there, I could go to Marquette for free. As a result, I was considering pretty much any other college in the world.

“My leg was bothering me, so I cancelled office hours and came home.”

I nodded. “That sucks. Did you take a pain pill?”

She smiled and held up two fingers.

“Okay, well, I’ve got homework, so I’ll leave you alone. Let me know if you need anything.” I grabbed a can of soda out of the refrigerator and headed up the back stairs, eager to get away from the evidence of my guilt.

My mother’s leg had been broken in a car accident a few months ago. It had been bad; she almost died. And it had been because of me.

I didn’t cause the accident, technically. Like, I didn’t cut her brake lines or hire someone to crash into her. She’d been a pawn in a game a psycho had been playing for my life, a way to convince me I had to go with him or no one I loved would be safe. It had almost worked.

My mother was on the mend, now. But we’d only gotten rid of the hospital bed in the living room last week, and she was still on a lot of pain medication, and every time I saw her wince or flinch or take a deep breath before she tackled the twelve stairs to her bedroom, I felt guilty. I had done this to her, and I couldn’t even tell her I was sorry.

“This sucks a little, huh, Brady?” I asked. Brady flopped his fluffy tail against the bedroom rug in agreement. He agreed with almost everything I said. It was one of the reasons I loved him.

Gabriel didn’t call me after football practice as promised; he showed up at my house around eight while I was scrubbing the pans from dinner, one of the many ways I assuaged my guilt for my mother’s accident. I knew it was him when I heard the doorbell. He had a way of pressing it that made it sound polite, somehow.

“Suzanne!” my father called from the living room. He was not ten feet away from the door watching television with my mother, but he knew it was Gabriel, too.

“Coming!” I wiped my hands on a clean dishtowel.

“You’re not going out,” my mother said as I passed the couch.

“I’m going out on the porch,” I answered.

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah.” I opened the door.

“Hi.” Gabriel smiled. Unlike his brother, Gabriel smiled all the time, sweet smiles that warmed you like you were standing in the sunshine. His smile would have been his best feature, if it weren’t for the rest of him.

“Evening, Robert, Patrice,” he said through the screen. My other friends didn’t get to call my parents by their first names, but Gabriel had managed it the first night he met them. He wouldn’t admit it to me, but I figured he’d used his power on them.

“Hello, Gabriel,” my father said. My mother waved. I stepped out onto the porch and shut the interior door behind me before they all got caught up in the ritual of polite chitchat they enjoyed so much.

“I thought you were going to call me,” I said as he put his arms around my waist and drew me close.

“I like this better,” he said, and kissed me.

Before Gabriel, the guys I dated had been a specific type: thin, sarcastic, non-joiners with attitude problems. Guys like Anastase. Gabriel could not have been more different. Varsity football player, member of the Student Council, beloved by students and teachers alike, Gabriel Beryl was a poster child for middle class suburban perfection. I wouldn’t have looked at him twice if it hadn’t been for his powers, and now I couldn’t imagine life without him.

I stepped back before we got too graphic and lead him by the hand to the porch swing. “How was practice?”

“What would you do if I gave you an actual answer to that question?” he asked as we sat down.

“What?” I put my legs across his lap. “I’m learning. You’re a running back—”

“Corner back,” he said.

“—and you stop guys from scoring stuff. Points.”

“Touchdowns,” he said.

I slugged him in the shoulder. “I know what touchdowns are!”

“Do you?”

“Besides, you know I don’t actually care about practice.”

“Then why do you ask?”

I leaned in and kissed him again. “I care about you.”

“That is . . . really romantic,” he said after the kiss. “Like, really.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Don’t make too much of it or I’ll never do it again.”

“Yeah, so, speaking of things you should never do again . . .” he said.

I tipped my head back against the arm of the swing, my mouth dropping open in a dramatic reenactment of falling asleep. “Snore!”

“Come on, Suzanne,” Gabriel said. “Don’t—”

“‘Don’t do this,’ ‘don’t do that’—what do we get to do?”

“You made lightning strike a goal post,” Gabriel pointed out. “Someone could have been hurt.”

“Actually, Spencer did that,” I said. “And no one was.”

“Still,” Gabriel said. “Besides, it’s not so much about the danger of your little trick, which was very dangerous, but about getting caught.”

“By who?” I asked. “Who’s going to catch us?”

“The other Horsemen are still out there.” Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, like they were just on the other side of the porch rail. “And they know we have a full circle.”

“I don’t get what the point of power is if you can’t do anything with it.”

Gabriel sighed, shaking his head, but he didn’t have an answer for me. The Beryls had made a big deal about how powerful it was to have a full circle of Elementals, all four elements plus me, the Fifth, but except for our fight against Morgan, we hadn’t done anything except a couple of ceremonies in the privacy of their fenced-in backyard, and a couple of minor things they could already do, like Anastase’s moths and the lightning. I had given up my future and the possibility of leaving this small town forever to become a member of their Circle, but since then we had done nothing major. Nothing real.

“Just . . . not at school, okay?” Gabriel said. “And nothing that can electrocute people.”

“I told you.” I hooked my arms around his neck. “That was Spencer.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “And your bad influence didn’t affect him at all.”

“What can I say?” I tipped my forehead to his. “I’m a bad girl.”

I went inside a few minutes later, kissing Gabriel goodbye on the porch and watching him walk down the sidewalk before I opened the door. Our first kiss back in April had been on the porch, and I liked the serendipity of saying goodbye to him there. It reminded me of our beginning, as strange as that had been.

“How is Gabriel?” my father asked as I shut the door behind me.

“Good.” I bent to pet Brady and let him sniff Gabriel’s smells. “Apparently, he’s a corner back, not a running back.”

My dad chuckled. His interest in football was limited, but he had that sort of sports osmosis many guys seemed to have, picked up from watching games with other men as a form of socializing. “You two seem pretty serious.”

I shrugged. Gabriel and I were way too serious—bonded for life by the Circle—but my parents didn’t know about that. “I guess,” I said. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

“You spend a lot of time together,” my mother said. “You’re always over at his house.”

“Yeah.” I picked the dish towel up off the side table and twisted it. They were going somewhere, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go with them.

“Are you exclusive?” she asked.

“Mom!”

“What, Suzanne?” she asked. “We aren’t asking if you’re having sex. We’re asking if you’re dating him exclusively.”

“Yes!” I said. “I am dating Gabriel exclusively. Can we be done, now?”

“Are you having sex?”

“DAD! Oh my god!”

“It’s a reasonable question,” my dad said. “We just want to make sure you’re being responsible and making good choices.”

“Good choices!? Dad, I cannot have this conversation with you.”

My mother spoke up. “If you can’t talk about it, Suzanne, then you really shouldn’t be having sex with some—”

“Mom, we are not having sex, okay? Also, there is a big difference between talking about sex with your, um, partner or whatever, and talking about it with your parents.” I spread my hands wide. “A very big difference!”

“Alright, alright, no need to yell,” my mother said.

“But if you do, you will use protection, right?” my father said.

“I would really prefer it if she gets on the pill first,” my mother said, like I wasn’t even standing there. “Condoms are all good and well, but I’m most concerned about pregnancy. Do you want to go to the doctor?” she asked me.

“I, what?”

“For the pill,” she said. “I can make you an appointment.”

What I wanted was for this whole conversation to stop, like, five minutes ago, but I couldn’t think of any reason to turn her down. This was my mother who, not six months ago, had practically put me on house arrest and she was asking me if I wanted to go on birth control so I could have sex with my boyfriend. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed, it might have been touching.

“I, um. Yes. Thank you. That would be great,” I managed.

“This isn’t a carte blanche,” she said. “Just because you have the pill doesn’t mean you have to make use of it.”

I nodded vigorously. “I get it,” I said. “Are we done?”

My parents exchanged a look. “Sure,” my father said.

“Great. Good talk.“ I bolted before they could bring up how old they were when they first had sex, or what positions they liked or something.

The thing was, I wasn’t a virgin. I hadn’t been for almost two years. The first time had been with Jason when we were still trying to date, and it had been sort of awful, but only the actual sex part. He and I adored each other, and I was glad we’d had that incredibly embarrassing experience together. And since Jason there had been a couple other guys, boyfriends, before Gabriel. Did my parents know that? Did they understand that a girl who hung out with the crowd I hung out with before we moved probably wasn’t a virgin after a certain point? Had my father guessed the afternoon he found me in my underwear snorting cocaine off a textbook? Maybe they did know and just didn’t want to remind me of my sordid past. Maybe they were hoping I would lose my virginity to the upstanding citizen that was Gabriel Beryl.

>>Remind me, I texted Gabriel when I was safely up in my room. >>to tell you what my parents asked me tonight.

A minute later I got his response. >>k. miss you.

I smiled at my phone. Gabriel was such a sap. I couldn’t believe I liked it.

*****

The Story So Far ...

2020-03-21T20:09:00.000-05:00


Seriously, look how good this cover is!

In 2018, I self-published a book that I've talked about on here for a long time -- The Fifth. You can buy it here. Since then (even before then, honestly), I've been working on a sequel, which is in final stages. And since these are trying times, indeed, I thought a way to spur myself to really complete the sequel is to release it serially here at my old blog. So that's what I'll be doing.

I plan to post excerpts of the sequel to The Fifth -- The Fourth Horseman -- two or three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, starting Monday, March 23rd. Some of the posts will be the actual content of the book, but I'm also planning on doing some posts with character descriptions and inspirations, cut scenes, song posts, all the blah blah blah. I hope it's as fun for those of you who choose to read as it's gonna be for me to do!

To get us started, a recap of the events of The Fifth, for those of you who haven't yet ordered your copies (hint, hint).

Suzanne Parker used to be a party girl, but her parents caught her using recreational drugs and, concerned about the path she was on, moved her to the very safe, very boring suburb of Benowa, Wisconsin. There, she is an outcast (which is how she likes it), until popular jock, Gabriel Beryl, shows an interest in her. She thinks she knows what he wants, but Gabriel is actually an Elemental, a person born with magic, and according to him, Suzanne is one, too.

If she chooses magic, Suzanne is stuck in Benowa with Gabriel forever; if she doesn’t, she’ll be free, but alone and vulnerable to other Elementals who want her power for themselves. And Gabriel is not the only one who has noticed her. She's also been spotted by Morgan, a member of the Circle of the Four Horsemen, a group of Elementals, both dangerous and seductive. Suzanne is tempted, but Morgan goes too far, and when he threatens her family, she turns to Gabriel and his brothers for help.

The sequel, The Fourth Horseman, takes place about six months after the end of The Fifth. Suzanne has become a full-fledged Elemental and a member of the Beryl Circle. She's got a great boyfriend, she's getting along better with her parents, even her grades are better. Everything is perfect. Until . . .

Oh thank God!

2018-01-05T07:00:00.000-06:00

I'm in the final stages of editing of one project, which I hope to release in the first quarter of next year, and during Nanowrimo, I finished the rough of the sequel to that project, but that draft needs to sit for a little while, like fine wine, so I can go back into it and tear it apart and fix all of the many many things that are wrong with it, so in the meantime, I am working on a completely unrelated project that I've had in draft for a while.

This is the first time I've revisited it in a while, and I opened the file with some trepidation, because you never know what you're going to find when you go back to an old project. It is decent, or is it full of bad writing and problematic concepts and stupidity.

But this one is good.

Thank God.

I mean, it still needs a ton of work, and since it involves three viewpoint characters, that means three times the work, but they are interesting and fun and the plot is still solid. What a relief.

I'm one of those writers that has to keep working, almost daily, or I get out of the habit quickly, so it's nice to have a project in this middling stage that I can shape into something. I love starting things--starting things is always the easiest for me, as I expect it is for most people--but the messy middle is where the story really happens, where changes ripple out like stones in a still pond, where the characters really reveal themselves, and that's where I am with this project. It's an exciting place to be.

Working on it Wednesday #55: My Tics and Tips

2018-01-03T07:00:00.000-06:00

I'm in the process of editing one of my books, one of the final edits before I send it out to a third party editor for fresh eyes. This is the edit when I make sure ~~that~~ the plot hangs together and the emotional beats make sense. It's also the edit when I remove all the words I use too often out of laziness or habit or some combination of both.

This is my list of words:

1. That. This is a big one. I cannot stop inserting "that" into sentences that don't require it. (See the second sentence above. Sometimes, "that" is necessary and important grammatically, and sometimes it's necessary for the rhythm of the sentence, and sometimes I'm doing it because my fingers insert it without me even thinking about it. Most of the time, I can just delete it, but the trick is finding it in the first place. (Thanks Find/Replace!)

2. Some reason. For some reason, I insert "some reason" into sentences when really what I need to do is either explain why the character is doing what she's doing or leave an explanation out altogether. "Some reason" is a lame attempt at including character motivation and it needs to be deleted.

3. Long while. This is the temporal equivalent of "some reason," a placeholder for when I don't know or don't want to say how long something takes or how long it's been going on. It also needs to go.

4. Deep breath. This is not just me: a lot of writers have their characters "deep breath"ing all over the place. I fortunately do not have the habit of replacing "deep breath" with "sigh" but "deep breath" in and of itself needs to go in most cases. Characters need to have physical business to do, but no one pays that much attention to their breathing, so this needs to be reduced down to occasional use.

5. Remember. "Remember" is fine when it needs to be in, but I tend to include it instead of relying on other clues to let the reader know that the character is thinking of the past. "Remember" should be used sparingly, like really hot peppers.

6. Just. Like "remember" this is another seasoning word, and like "that" this is another word I insert without even thinking about it, often in character dialogue. Sometimes, I like the way it makes dialogue sound more realistic, but quite often, it's ~~just~~ a tic that doesn't need to be there.

7. Look/Seem; Turn; Push/Pull. The rest of the words on this list are the ones that are fine, but also can be replaced by other more accurate words for particular actions. I'm normally a fan of plain language, but sometimes plain language is just plain boring. There are plenty of words in the world, and I should use more of them as long as they are accurate not only in denotation, but in tone and connotation. In the course of revision, I've actually found paragraphs where I use one of these words four or five times, which is pretty ridiculous.

I don't worry about these words in my initial writing--if I did, I'd be completely paralyzed by all these prohibitions and never get anything finished--but it's always interesting to do this edit and see how a sentence or a paragraph or scene changes when I pay attention to them.

I'm back!

2017-12-04T05:57:00.000-06:00

I fell out of the habit of blogging when Real Life (TM) happened to me, and perhaps I'll get into the details down the road, but for now, hi! How ya been?

More to come...

Jay Hears a Song #14 -- The Only Hope For Me Is You

2010-12-03T05:53:00.000-06:00

One of the bands I totally love is My Chemical Romance. I've loved them since the first time I saw the video for their song "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," which looks like a movie trailer for the best revenge of the nerds video, ever. Take a look:

That is a great video. And it didn't hurt that the song was just as great--a fresh and angry take on being abandoned by someone you thought really liked you.

That song, their breakout hit, was on their second album. Their third was the epic The Black Parade, which deviated from the emo rock template and was both bloated and grand. Everything about The Black Parade was big. The songs, the videos, the tour, and the post partum depression that followed it, which is why it took four years for them to make a follow-up album.

The album -- Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys -- came out last Monday, and is...well, from a hard rock emo band like My Chemical Romance, it's a surprise. A wonderful one. There are a number of amazing songs on this album, but this one -- "The Only Hope For Me Is You" -- is my current favorite, and was released as a preview, so I don't feel bad posting it here even though it's not the current single. Listen to this*:

It's beautiful, right? It's haunting, and somehow familiar, although there's nothing like it on the radio. And it's sad, but also hopeful. And, compared to "I'm Not Okay" it's positively mellow. Just lovely.

Sample Lyrics:

Where were you when all of the embers fell?
I still remember them,
covered in ash,
covered in glass.
covered in all my friends.
I still think of the bombs they builtA post-apocalyptic love song. Fantastic.

But after a few listens, and a little help from my iPod, I realized why the song sounded so familiar to me immediately. It's because of the first fifteen seconds.

Listen to the first fifteen seconds of "The Only Hope For Me Is You" and then listen to the first thirty seconds of this:

That's right, the beginning of one of the songs off MCR's new album is eerily reminiscent of the beginning of "Your Wildest Dreams" by The Moody Blues, released in 1986.

That's not to say that they're copies of each other, the way some Nickelback songs are copies of other Nickelback songs,** just that the similarities are enough that MCR's song made me recall the Moody Blues' song.*** And the songs are similar enough in tone that that recollection wasn't jarring--so natural, in fact, that it felt like I'd heard the MCR song before, even on the first listen.

Is it intentional? I don't know. MCR's always been one of those bands who wears its influences on its sleeve (take a listen to anything on The Black Parade--it's so full of Queen that you expect to hear Freddie Mercury any second), but The Moody Blues hasn't been on the list of influences that they've mentioned thus far (although Danger Days is very influenced by the 80s in general). I doubt that they thought "let's remake the first thirty seconds of 'Your Wildest Dreams.'" I suspect it happened the way that influences make their way into my writing -- you hear something or read something and somehow it sticks with you, in your subconscious, until it seeps out into the work. And then, someone like me comes along and says to you "hey, that's sort of like this" and you look at it again and say "holy cow! You're right!"

Either way, it's a kickass song.

~~~

* The song hasn't been a single yet, so there's not a video for it.

** No, really. COPIES. Listen to this:

*** In fact, after the first fifteen seconds, the songs diverge and aren't really similar at all.

I am a fan girl

2010-12-01T05:36:00.002-06:00

Last week, Steph Bowe wrote a post about how she is not a fangirl. She's a fan of things, of course, but she's not obsessive. And it's a little embarrassing that I, a grown adult, am being out-matured by a 16-year-old, but there you go.

Because I'm totally a fan girl.

It started when I was 12, with a band, and then there was a book (and it's author), and then there was another band, and then a tv show, and another tv show, and now there's another band. I'm not one of those fan girls who falls in love with whatever's popular at the moment; in fact, the things I have fannish love for are about 50/50 split as to whether they're generally popular or not. But there's usually something.

And just like Steph can't explain why she's not a fan girl, I can't explain why I am one. Why do I spend hours of my life engaging with a cultural artifact that doesn't engage back? I've flown across the country, waited in line for hours, suffered through rain and sleet and dark or night, and spent money I shouldn't have spent to indulge my love for these things I love. I've even bought books in hardcover!

Some people think that this tendency in an adult is silly or immature. Maybe it is--I don't care. Because, honestly, part of the reason why I write, part of the reason why I'm so attuned to character, is because I'm such a fan girl. I hope that my books, my characters, turn teenagers into screaming fangirls and boys. Popularity is not something that the writer can control,* but if I as the writer could have the effect on one teenager that some of these books and bands have had on me? That would be the ultimate.

And now I have to go. The current love of my pop culture life has a new album out and I haven't memorized all the words yet.

~~~

* Lessons learned from fanfiction: you can never predict exactly what the audience is going to respond to.

Monday Miscellany

2010-11-29T07:28:00.000-06:00

1. This weekend, I went to see Burlesque with Cher and Christina Aguilera. It was AWESOME. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good movie, but it was hilarious, and campy, and had snappy dialogue, and Cher sang twice and Christina sang about a hundred times and the amazing thing that saved the tiny burlesque club from destruction is totally not the amazing thing you think it's going to be, and yeah...AWESOME. If you like Cher and/or Christina Aguilera, you should totally go see it.

2. When I am 69 years old, I want to look like Cher. In fact, I'm willing to look like Cher now.

3. Lately, I've been watching Law & Order UK, and it's fascinating to see the familiar cases from the original Law & Order remade from an English point of view.* The English legal system fascinates me, and the stories are just as good as ever. The original was on television for 20 years for a reason.

~~~

* And the barristers wear wigs! Really ill-fitting old fashioned ones that look crazy at first, like this:

But you get used to it quickly.

I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means

2010-09-04T09:25:00.003-05:00

Recently, I've been seeing a lot of commercials that, superficially, seem to say one thing* but also saying another much less flattering thing. This cracks me up, because it seems like, if I'm seeing these things, shouldn't the people who get paid a lot of money to create the commercials see them, too? But let me give some examples, so you can see what I'm talking about:

1. The Swiffer Commercials

Look, I love Swiffer. I use Swiffer (the plain ordinary wipe-on-a-stick ones, not the crazy jet ones). But this series of commercials is way screwed up. Take a look:

There's a whole series of these, in which the broom or mop essentially stalks the woman (never a man, notice) who has switched to Swiffer. On the surface, oh, ha ha, the broom and mop are sad that you left them. What a cute-ish commercial! But even if we set aside the fact that the commercial is essentially making light of stalking behaviors (since stalking by a broom is, you know, not very likely), the commercial has another, even more disturbing implication, namely that the woman in question was...um...romantically involved with a broom. And a mop. That is at the very least an uncomfortable suggestion and at the most? eww.

Really.

EWW.

2. The Microsoft "Windows 7 was my idea" commercials.

These are the commercials where various regular people take credit for inventing the new Windows operating system, which, as a Mac user, crack me up anyway, because really? You want to take credit for that? But even looking past my own Mac bias (which is large), the message of the commercials is odd. Take a look:

On one hand, the commercials along this vein are awesome, because each of them demonstrates a new feature of Windows 7 and makes that feature look easy to use. On the other hand, these commercials basically state that Windows 7 users are (a) stupid, and (b) not as attractive as they think they are. Oh, and that Microsoft steals ideas from its customers.

For real. The common features in each commercial are these: (1) a Windows user talks about how he or she had this idea for a cool new feature. (2) We see a flashback, in which a hyper-attractive version of the user (not played by the original actor cleaned up to look better, but a totally different, much hotter actor) has the idea. (3) The we're back in the present, where the schlubby user demonstrates the new feature, and (4) then the schlub takes credit for inventing Windows 7.

I'm sure they're trying to counteract those smug Mac v. PC ads that were so successful from a year or two ago** by reassuring their customers that PCs are for normal people. I get that. But really, what these commercials are saying is "PC users are deluded and maybe not so bright." And that's never a message customers want to hear about themselves.

3. The Clorox Mad Men Commercial

I love Mad Men. I do. I've watched it since day one, and one of the really interesting things about it is watching the social attitudes in the show about women's roles, and parenting, and masculinity in the workplace and all those other things that make it feel like a slice of life from the 60s (even though, you know, it's really not). But while I admire the show, many of the attitudes of the characters (about adultery and the treatment of women, especially) aren't things I particularly admire. Don Draper is hot, for sure, but I don't want to be his wife or girlfriend.***

So when Clorox bleach decided to run this ad, I can only assume that it was the result of an anachronistic three martini lunch. Take a look:

Yep, that's right. Here's a laundry detergent company, whose primary market is probably women, married women, suggesting that it's product is best for getting rid of the incriminating evidence of their husbands' affairs.

This one, unlike the two commercials above, isn't a muddled message, it's just a bad one. Unless the product is being marketed to (a) men who have affairs or (b) mistresses who do their partner's laundry before sending him home****, who the heck is this commercial supposed to be appealing to?

What commercials with mixed messages (or just plain bad ones) have I missed? I'm sure there are millions out there -- I do have a DVR and a tendency to skip them.

~~~

* That one thing being "this product is awesome and you should totally buy it."

** Although some people would argue that the Mac v. PC ads really just portrayed Mac users as smug hipsters and PC users as cool funny guys like John Hodgman (who, by the way, is a Mac user. True story.).

*** Jon Hamm is another matter altogether, though. Wow. That is an attractive man.

**** I've never been anyone's mistress, but it seems to me that one of the advantages of mistressing would be never having to do the guy's laundry.

On Series Fiction

2010-09-01T08:11:00.002-05:00

Lately, I've been reading a lot of series YA books,* books that have two or three or four sequels, and I have to say that it hasn't been going so well. Usually, this is what happens:

(1) I love the first book. It's awesome and original and the characters are great.
(2) The second book is good. Maybe the idea isn't as good, or the characters seem a little stale or something. But it's still a pretty good book, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
(3) I read book three and think "really"? and put it down halfway through after skimming to the end to find out who dies.

For a while I wasn't sure why I was having that reaction. I mean, these are all different authors, writing about very different topics, so how was it possible that my reaction was pretty much the same each time? Was it ME? Could I be the problem?**

Then I realized what was happening--it was the adults.

I went back to confirm and, sure enough, in each of these different series, the first book is all about the teenager. Who the character is, what problems the character faces, the relationships between the characters and the big conflict, that's all about the main character, the young adult.

But starting in book two, that focus starts to shift. Suddenly, adults matter more. Suddenly, there are politics. ::shudder::*** And here's the thing: I don't care about adults. I mean, in real life, of course I care about adults. And I care about adults in books, too, when I read books about adults.

But, for me at least, YA fiction is supposed to be about teenagers. Young adults. Not the political machinations of adults who use teenagers as their pawns or try to manipulate them or control them. So when a series becomes more concerned with the doings of the adults than the doings of the main character I signed up for? That's when I start checking out.

I think this happens, at least in part, for two reasons:

(1) the people writing the books are mostly adults. So they sometimes lose sight of the fact that the goings on of the adult world? Not all that interesting to kids (and readers with the minds of kids, like me :) ).

(2) in a series, you need to raise the stakes. So something that starts as a deliberate and focused story in book one (that maybe was never even meant to be a series, keep in mind), has to get bigger and badder in book two and three and four and etc. Suddenly, the boy just out to save himself now needs to save the whole town or the whole world. The stakes get bigger, the cast gets bigger, and BAM! suddenly you're in the middle of a debate on the floor of the Imperial Senate wondering how you got there and why your main character is suddenly a spectator instead of an actor.

And that spells trouble. Right here in River City.

It's also something for me to keep in mind as some of the stories I'm writing could serve as a jumping off point for a series. And if that happens, I have to make sure that my books don't fall victim to the same sorts of problems I'm seeing in these books.

~~~

* Some of these are new series, and some of them are old series (like 60 years old).

** Maybe I am also part of the problem. I'm willing to consider that possibility, but it doesn't make for a very good blog entry.

*** For a perfect example of how politics can ruin a good story, see the prequels to Star Wars. I'm sorry, we went from Darth Vader and Han Solo to the debates of the Imperial Senate? Guess who couldn't care less about that?

Monday Miscellany--The Contracts Edition

2010-07-19T05:37:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of blog posts about writing contracts and clauses. As a lawyer, the contracts part of the publishing business is one of the interesting parts of the business for me, and since I don't do publishing contracts myself, I thought I would gather up all the posts into one giant linkfest. Enjoy!*

1. Here's Jane at Dystel and Goderich Literary Agency on the importance of reading your contract, a post that was inspired by a publisher sending out a notice of amendment for their contracts.

2. Here's a post over at Bookends LLC by writer Sally MacKenzie, about how she realized there's no such thing as a "boilerplate" contract.**

3. Here's Agent Kristin at Pub Rants talking about why you might not want a multi-book deal. (Hint: it involves the term "cross-collateralization."

4. And here's Agent Kristin again, on how one unethical person can ruin things for the rest of us. (Long story short: an agent tampered with a PDF version of a contract and made unauthorized changes and tried to get it through at the publishers. This is NOT a good idea, people.)

5. And here's Stroppy Author's blog, a whole blog about reading your publishing contract.*** Note that she's in the UK, where contracts vary from those in the U.S.

6. And finally, here's Agent Kristin again with why publishers shouldn't be holding a reserve on returns on ebooks.
~~~

* And even if you don't "enjoy" reading about contracts, they are a really important part of the publishing journey.

** Sally also talks about some other aspects of the business of writing that might not occur to writers before they get a contract.

*** Please note that Stroppy Author is just that, an author, and isn't a lawyer. And that your results should you follow her advice, may vary. It's still a good introduction to things to be thinking about when you read your contract.

On Titles

2010-07-16T05:44:00.000-05:00

I used to be awesome at titles. For real. My fan fiction has awesome titles, catchy and intriguing and epic in scope.

That has changed recently.

I don't know what's up with me, but right now my titles are boring and descriptive. Agent Ted and I are agonizing* over what to call The Book. And my Next Book is titled something so boring I can't even bring myself to type it here for fear that you might fall asleep just reading it.

And there are so many good titles on the market, recently.** The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Dead and the Gone, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Winter Girls, Don't Judge A Girl By Her Cover, Shiver, ...I could go on and on and on. We're having a real title renaissance at the moment, I think, and, as a result, I'm having a bit of title jealousy.

Jane, over at Dystel and Goderich, had a recent post about titles, and so did Eric over at Pimp My Novel. Neither of these posts have fixed my title malaise (yet!), but they're a good place to start.

~~~

* By "agonizing" I mean "sending emails back and forth saying stuff like 'do you like this one? Or this one? What about this one?'" So...not so much agonizing as discussing. You get the point.

** I mean titles, not the books that have the titles, although they might be good books, too, but I haven't read some of them. I'm just talking about the titles here.

Workin' On It Wednesday #53 -- On Belief

2010-07-14T05:57:00.000-05:00

I'm in the middle of revision. Again. I'm always in the middle of revision, if you want the honest truth: as a fast writer, someone who screams through a first draft and puts stuff like [INSERT DRAMATIC SCENE HERE] in my drafts, the moment I put something down on (figurative) paper, I'm already revising. Really, my writing is, like, 80% revision, and I have no fear of it.

But sometimes, I get tired.

We all do. As I talked about here, it's really important that the author isn't the one to give up on a book before anyone else does, but that's sometimes hard to remember the fifth (or eighth, or tenth) time through a manuscript.

And, on top of being tired, there are the doubts. Because the fifth (or twelfth, or fourteenth) time through the book, there are moments when I look at the book and I think "jesus, this isn't very good."

Unlike weariness with a project--which can be fought through--there's nothing to really do about the doubts. I can push through the tiredness with sheer grit and determination. But doubt? There's no pushing through doubt, because the more I push, the more I think "if this were good, would I have to push this hard? Shouldn't 'good' be easier than this?"

That doesn't make sense, of course, especially not for me, an inveterate reviser. But sense or not, the doubts are there.

This week, though, I read Kristin Cashore's blog post about how she faces her doubts and how she deals with them. This is what she said:

I can see the book as a whole now, and every single day, I struggle with the voices that are telling me it's not going to work, it's going to fail. It isn't about anything. I'm not good enough to pull all the loose ends together. I'll get to the climax and realize that it's a dumb climax. It's a mess and revisions won't solve the problems.

The good news is that they're just voices, they can't control me, and I'm used to them. ...

You acknowledge the voices, but you write anyway. This faith is performative. I believe in this book.

And for some reason, even though I don't know Kristin, her words made me feel better, and I think I'm going to make them one of my mottoes.

This faith is performative. I believe in this book.

Monday Miscellany

2010-07-12T06:05:00.000-05:00

1. Elmo got a ticket this weekend. 87 in a 70.* But it's not my fault that Elmo doesn't really settle in until 75. I have a need for speed!**

2. I have been seeing a lot of baseball lately. A lot. And today was a very exciting game -- Brewers v. Pirates, which the Brewers won with a walkoff homer by Corey Hart. Not this Corey Hart:

This Corey Hart:

The thing that cracks me up is that Corey Hart, the baseball player, was born in 1982, which is a mere TWO YEARS before Corey Hart, the musician, became famous for "Never Surrender" and "Sunglasses at Night." Sometimes, the world works in mysterious ways.

3. I love high summer. The only thing bad about summer is that it's followed by fall. Stupid fall.

4. I'm visiting with my niece this week. It's only the second day, and I have already seen enough Hannah Montana to last me a lifetime. ::shiver::

~~~

* Actual exchange between me and the polite officer who stopped me:

Him: Do you know how fast you were going?
Me: No. [this is true.]
Him: I clocked you at 87. Any reason why you were going that fast?
Me: [thinking "at least he didn't catch me when I was 95"] No, sir.
Him: You should slow down. License and registration, please.
Me: sigh.

** Seriously, though, I would never drive that fast if the road wasn't perfectly visible and empty of traffic. Tailgating is a sin against the gods of driving.

Ooh, AND!

2010-07-11T20:08:00.002-05:00

My very own beloved Agent Ted has a BOOK OUT.

I know!

You can buy it here from Amazon, or here from Barnes and Noble. (Mine is on order from my local bookstore, but I should get it next week!)

Congratulations Agent Ted!

Monday Miscellany (the Tuesday edition)

2010-06-29T05:52:00.003-05:00

1. I get what Swiffer is trying to do with those commercials where the broom, abandoned by its owner/operator, finds love with a bowling ball or a lawn flamingo, but I wonder if they realize that they are implying that the broom was having sex with a person. Think before you take the joke too far, Swiffer.

2. I love Friday Night Lights. I go on and on about why, but if you're watching the show, you already know, and if you're not watching the show, then you won't believe me anyways.

3. Revisions have eaten my brain. Fortunately, I wasn't using it for much anyways, so it doesn't seem to have affected my day-to-day life.

4. We had thunderstorms this weekend in Ohio. I love thunderstorms. I love them even more when no branches fall on my roof of hit my gutter, but I guess you can't have everything. Seriously, though, if I could live in a place where it's almost always summer, I would.