Been working on a little something myself.

*ahem…*

Cash smiled and winked as he tipped the waitress. He wasn’t surprised when she wrote her phone number on his ticket, but he tried not to show it. A certain discretion was one of those things that came with being dashing, and Cash was definitely dashing.

Maybe he wasn’t as young as he used to be, maybe his hair was greying at the temples. But, hell, it had started that when he was twenty-three. Same as his father, may the worthless bastard rest in peace. Cash preferred to think it made him more dashing rather than less, and all available evidence bore that out. He still made dashing look easy.

It was just that… well, somehow it wasn’t as fun anymore, and he sighed as he crumpled the waitresses number (what was her name? Gloria? Karla?) and tossed it in the trash outside the cafe. It hit the rim at the same time as the door banged shut behind him, sounding so loud and echoing and final. He jumped.

Was he getting that old? Jumping at nothing was surely the opposite of dashing, and he hoped nobody had seen. He set off purposefully, squinting into the sun just enough to dimple. A young woman in a business suit twinkled back. Still have it, he thought, just going through a phase. Jaded, that was all. You’re only as old as the person you’re feeling and Cash told himself he felt fine, though he had no firm grasp on either the suit or how old she might be.

Jaded might explain it but there was no denying something had changed. He walked the few blocks to his hotel and slipped in a side door to avoid the front desk girls.

Old Cash would never had done that.

He was certainly looking into the past too much. That might explain his funk. New Cash (no, older Cash — present Cash, at any rate) had been thinking back to his younger days, when he’d been rash as well as dashing, when he’d been more naive, greedier.

Back to when he’d found the macguffin. That was the time in his life that was on his mind lately and compared to that Cash, this Cash was old. Older. Lately he’d been nostalgic about that time, and he was afraid it was starting to show. He’d even dreamed about Antarctica for three nights now.

It was, in fact, what he was doing in [where ever we decide he is before re-embarking to Antarctica or whatever we're going to do to the poor but dashing man].

I like surprise plot twists where there are hints to where it is headed but only if you are watching very carefully. I like things that explore interpersonal relationships. I don’t know if we’re on the same track about ‘other dimensions’ because I tend to think of it as altered states of consciousness. But it could be the same type of thing.

Characters that are flawed but still sympathetic enough that you care what happens to them. Characters that have at least one obvious strength, either normal or paranormal. I can’t stand characters with stupid names. I’ve been known to toss a book because the main characters’ names were too distracting.

I’m not into the unicorn thing either. Settings that are not too terribly shifted from reality. They can be different but I have trouble holding my attention on totally ‘other’. It is easier for me to introduce surprise twists when the entire set up is not surprising.

Did that help at all?

…i mean, obviously. *grin* but you see what i mean. thing is, i’d have a hard time answering “what’s it about?” for half the stuff i’ve actually written.

eh, for what it’s worth, i quite enjoy digging around in obsession, and i’m not so much for betrayal but i like a good dose of irony and i LOVE a good plot twist or fourteen and it’s not enough to just throw in something unexpected. short stories are my favorite form of literature because you can explore those kinds of things from a more cerebral, less plot-driven viewpoint without it getting tiresome (though with a collaborative effort that form would be much to restrictive, i think – we need room to play). that said, i tend to much prefer plot-driven to character-driven unless/until you find that vitally riveting character. it’s about the interplay BETWEEN the plot and character, what the plot makes your character do and how you find out which of them are worth your interest and then how they, in turn, shape the plot which brings out the worst or best in the other characters so that you can then discover which of THEM are flawed and tough enough to be worth your time and… so on. i do love good character-driven writing, but i’m somewhat more likely to read a great plot with less-than-stellar characters than vice-versa, partly because it’s rare to find those characters so interesting i’d read about what they had for breakfast and partly because i think it’s more difficult for me to write on that vector.

i guess i said all that to say good characters Have Story. sure, he’s fascinating, but WHY are you hearing about him?

trivially, i like things and people getting sucked into other dimensions.

Steff?

Nan?

OMG excited person?