picowrimo | Pico day 10

Another hour this morning, and as a reward, some *cough cough* research via MFU dvd before going to work:)

Woo hoo! It's the last day of school!

I managed to write about a page or so before work, which is a good thing, as I'd be in no shape to write anything after it. Baking scones with 20+ eight-year-olds by over 30 degrees is a tad exhausting.
Anyway, longer snippet than usual today, as it wouldn't make any sense otherwise. Please forgive me.

Excerpt:
Briefly considering what would be the best route of action, s/he carefully released a small amount of the Bridrani equivalent of endorphins and watched the big, burly security officer at the door relax slightly. His grim face eased into a somewhat friendlier expression; in fact, he almost smiled to himself. Almost.

Rina strolled over to him and gave him another dosage of hir happiness hormones. “Ensign Burke,” s/he said with a bright smile. “It seems that Commander Data is recovering.”

Burke wasn’t quite buying that from hir. “What makes you think so?” he asked doubtfully.

Rina beamed at him in a way that would make most men (and quite a few women, too) weak-kneed at once. “I’ve managed to talk him out of shutting himself down,” s/he told the man brightly. “He even made the request to see the stars again. Do you think we could take him to the observations lounge?”

Burke frowned. Apparently, he was made of sterner stuff than most men. Or he had a natural immunity against Bridrani pheromones. Unlikely as that seemed, it was not entirely impossible.

“I don’t know,” he said. “When the captain confines somebody to quarters, they’re supposed to stay there, you know. Until the captain says otherwise.”

Rina blinked with hir impossibly long lashes most endearingly. “Of course. However, I’m not suggesting letting the commander go wherever he pleases. This would be merely a short trip to the observation lounge, to lift his spirits.”

“I dunno,” Burke said uncertainly, his resistance crumbling under the onslaught of hir pheromones. “Perhaps we should notify the captain first…”

“Oh, absolutely!” Rina agreed, dosing him again. “I’ll do so myself, as soon as we are in the observation lounge. The captain will be overjoyed to hear that the commander is better. You know how much he values him.”

That sounded very logical, at least for Burke’s hormone-addled brain. Besides, what could possibly happen? He was about to accompany them in the lounge, wasn’t he? Commander Data would remain under guard, just as the captain had ordered.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

More work with the red pen today, and only one or two sentences underlined to go back and work on a bit more later. One last snippet of Kate andd Edward before I get round to typing up the next chapter:

"And what's he like, this son of yours?" Kate handed the picture back to Edward. "I can hardly be expected to judge his personality from a photograph."

"He's good at languages." As a Peveril, raised bilingual, and with a Spanish-speaking nanny, that was hardly surprising. "He likes team sports – and swimming. He seems to have made a lot of friends at his school: he stays with some of their families for half-terms." No point in making him sound too obviously like Hugh: don't mention his art just yet. "He likes horses. I've no idea where he gets that from, unless he's a throwback to the old cavalry Peverils."

"I used to ride," Kate said. "And my Uncle Peter bred thoroughbreds near Newmarket." She sipped her wine. "Have you thought what you're going to do with him all summer? You should ask Sarah at the riding school if she can recommend a mount for him."

"It's an idea." Sarah, one of those exuberantly confident hunting-and-showjumping types of uncertain age, though probably older than Linda, intimidated him a little. She seemed to regard Edward as a potential conquest to be tamed – in spite of having met Derek. At least the ladies of Lower Pemberley WI only wanted to feed him and ensure his support in their attempts to beat the Upper Pemberley crowd at the Bakewell Show competitions. "I thought he might like to help out on the farms as well."

409 words, and I managed to slot in a particularly good line that I'd come up with a few days ago. Snippet:

'But why get married?' I asked. 'Why not just move in together?' It all seemed horribly sudden to me.

Emma and Jay exchanged world-weary glances. 'It's about who I want to be my next of kin,' Jay said. 'To be perfectly honest, I don't trust my parents any more. Say something happened – say I walked out of this pub and was run over in the car park. As things stand, Mum and Dad could stop Dan getting into the hospital to see me as I lay dying.'

'You think they'd do that?' I asked, impressed despite rather than because of Jay's melodrama. I tried to believe the best of people, but I had to admit that my faith in human nature had been shaken hard recently.

Jay grimaced. 'I don't want to risk it. They won't like Dan. He's black, and he's a man. The only way that Mum and Dad could hate him more would be if he were also a grey squirrel.'

(Oh, that's another thing about the Isle of Wight. Irrational hatred of grey squirrels.)

Real life has been getting badly in the way with pico this month, but I managed to do 360 words this evening. Just some shortish light fanfic (Lord Peter Wimsey bodyswap, oh dear), but fun to do. I'm hoping to get this one finished in a couple of days, and then move back to the main fic and see if I can push it along a bit. So here is Harriet, in a bar, in Peter's body, with Peter in hers, contemplating the complicating prospects of alcohol...

***

Seated in the bar, Harriet contemplated the possible effects of brandy and soda on an empty stomach and shuddered. It was all right for Peter, who had ordered coffee, but Hardy was already on his second glass and she suspected that masculine codes required her to at least drink one.

282 words this AM. Still floundering, but I'm just going with it and will see what's salvageable at the end of the week. Among other things I'm trying to find the right tone for Illya and Angelique.

"You lied to Napoleon," he said without preamble. "Why?"

"Darling, of course I lie to Napoleon, just as he lies to me. It's called flirting. Perhaps you should indulge in it some time." She spoke lightly, but his stare made her look away.

I've fallen off the Picowagon a bit, mainly because I've just been reading Chandler and not getting any actual writing done. I have thought a little about my protagonist's backstory, and pondered to what extent I ought to follow a beta's advice to give him a bit more agency, without much outcome. (Or any useful thoughts on how I might give him more agency if that's needed...)

I think I'm going to take someone's advice and start on an easier section, as all the demands on this bridging section seem to be getting me down. A teaser of the recalcitrant bit, a mix of new, edited & original; this follows from ch 5 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/276049/chapters/700124) and goes immediately before the snatch of dialogue I posted earlier...

Now the baby princess had got her big secret off her flat chest she was happy to be bundled into a cab headed straight up to the palace. As the kid seemed to have taken such a shine to the lieutenant woman, I figured the two of them could use some quality time together. I took the chance to pinch the broad’s sergeant. Turned out it was my old pal Hornbeam. The pair of us went way back. Back when he was the short guy to my tall guy, and Hali was the straight guy to Groundsel’s—

Hornbeam was the only one who’d stuck it out in CHOP. He hadn’t changed much. He was still as short as a prima donna’s temper. He’d never grow any taller now. None of us would.

Not written with Picopower, as I finished it on 31 May, but someone here might conceivably be interested in my Sutcliff Swap story: The Boy with Wolf's Eyes (http://archiveofourown.org/works/4044559) (The Mark of the Horse Lord). It's a vignette that started out edging into horror but my beta persuaded me to unpack the ending so it slides into something rather more comfortable. Interested in what people think!

Having one of those days where most of the sentences sound like, "See Spot run." Deciding to ignore that, I finished the latest scene in the Jaguar. There will be much re-writing in the future.

***
A wind rustled the paper. Alistair shut the windows and lowered the partition. “You should probably come up here before I open any more doors.” Alistair twisted around to look in the backseat.

Red scratched at the pink newspaper on the floor and stepped off it.

Alistair wrinkled his nose. “Good I have another copy of that.”

Edited 2015-06-10 23:15 (UTC)

I wrote 276 words tonight of a cute little scene I just decided to add. If I don't stop thinking up cute little extra scenes, this fic will never be done. :P But it's best when the writing is fun, so I'm not complaining.

Not many words today, about 150, more messing about. What I have realised is that I don't actually have (even by my own pitiful standards) what you'd actually call a storyline to hang the dialogue and atmospheric imagery on.

Now as I have said for years, plot is NOT my forte which is why vignettes and short shorts are what I most like to do (it is no coincidence that my one and only story with a decently strong plot... I stole from Dickens:) but I do need more than I have with this piece, so for the next day or two will concentrate on trying to put together - if only in point form - some coherent action between "my heroes vanish and mysteriously turn up somewhere else" and "my heroes work out what is happening and make it home" (like, for instance, what they do to in order to work out what happened).

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Watch Rina in action

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