Day 4 (Team July)

[kerravonsen]

Yes, I'm butting in here to post, because it's evening of the 4th here, and there is no post! So join me in the boasting progress reports and encouragement for this day's creative work!

Comments

Lunch pico, as will be out later tonight

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Still Maurice, still yelling at inner critic. Will respond to other snippets later on this eve...400 words over lunch.

A Sad Story

I was about to beat it for the afternoon when my editor Barry Kenyon joined me in the kitchen.

"Quint." He shuffled past my swinging leg and opened the refrigerator, whistling "You Can't Take That Away From Me" as he reached in for a pie. I hated when he had pie. He would heat it up then and the office would stink for hours.

I could have called him "Ken" in response. Instead I said nothing. I didn't feel like it that day.

"Oh, did you hear the news?" he said casually. "Your mate, Roma Feilding. Found dead this morning. Been that way for weeks apparently."

"No, I hadn't heard. My God, what happened? Heart attack?"

Kenyon shook his head. "Note." he said succintly.

He meant: Roma Feilding had commited suicide.

Kenyon patted me on the back. "Sorry, Maurice. I know you and she were thick together. She was a game old girl, our Romie. Could drink any of us under the table." He shut the oven door and moved off. Of course he had forgotten to preheat the thing. His pie would be indigestible.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Very efficient use of lunch hour!

Gruesome and glib. Not liking Kenyon. Romie and Maurice must not have been that thick if he not only hadn't heard the news, but hadn't been in contact with her for weeks, so Ken is inaccurate as well, but as he thinks she and Maurice were close, his remarks grate.

:)

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Heh. I wouldn't elevate him to the role of Antagonist, he doesn't do anything particularly awful apart from exist, but he is an irritating fellow.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

It's the "I've seen it all" old newspaperman stance. But if he forgot to heat the pie, he can't be completely unaffected after all can he.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Well, more that he forgot to preheat the oven. So to make up for that he will either eat it half raw or have to leave it in for ages till it's burnt. (Yeah, I had that why-can't-he-chuck-it-in-the-microwave moment!)

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Yay progress!

Good scene. How callous of Ken - he seems a real jerk :(

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

He's irritating all right, like lots of people one might end up working with and have nothing in common.

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

Good scene! And writing on lunch time is the height of dedication to the cause:)
That Kenyon. How can he sound so casual? What a creep. I suppose, as an editor he's seen it all and has become desensitized. Still, that's no excuse.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Roma was kind of a tragic figure. She had been a flapper around the time of the nineteen-twenties and before that had been in the Women's Flying Ambulance Unit (can't remember the precise name but somehting similar) and had worked as a journalist. She makes a very brief appearance earlier in the novel, but suffers a great loss and for the rest of her life lives a lie moored up in her house that has not changed since the Twenties...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Is Roma a major character? She doesn't sound the suicidal sort.

Kenyon deserves a soggy pie.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Not really. After That Scene she kinda disappears for a while until Eva tracks her down after the war is over. Roma is hosting a party and she does not take Eva's arrival very well, to put it mildly.

Since Kenyon resembles a soggy pie, it's fitting he eats one, I guess ;-)

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

That said, I will keep an eye out when reading over the draft for possible character inconsistency. Thanks for the heads-up.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

A sad excerpt indeed. Poor Maurice.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Maurice and Roma weren't really as close as Kenyon implies - it was a friendship that on Maurice's side carried a certain guilty irritability, I think. But the timing is not great.

Re: Lunch pico, as will be out later tonight

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Kenyon sounds a complete prick. Wishing you luck with sitting on your inner critic.

Re: Lunch pico, as will be out later tonight

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I sat on him long enough to finish the opening scene. Yay!

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

What an unpleasant character! And I love the detail of the pie.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

:) thank you. He's an annoying boss more than anything.