A-Muse-Ing, the book that ate my brain and lit a fire in my heart, is away to the editor’s. Rory and Harper are two of my favorite characters that I’ve ever written, and test readers tell me the energy and flow has the same flavor of “zing” as the Rack and Daniel stories. Hurray!
Now, I wait for my editor to work her magic. She’s a spectacular lady.
While I wait, my mind wanders, and I find myself wondering if sending a manuscript off to one’s editor is maybe a lot like sending a child off to their first day of kindergarten. (My mind can be a strange, strange place sometimes.) (Okay, most of the time.)
Seriously, though. It goes a little something like this:
Manuscript (Child)
- You’ve interviewed teachers, investigated the school and poked around for anything unsafe (critiqued it)
- Washed its face (formatted it)
- Dressed it in its best (self-edited one last time)
- Combed its hair — stay still, dagnabit, this is for your own good! (made sure everything’s spelled right because you don’t trust the Windows spall chock)
- Watched it step onto the bright yellow school bus (oh god, oh god, hitting “send” on the email now)
And let’s not forget making sure it remembered its sack lunch (oh s**t, please tell me I remembered to attach the manuscript to the email!)
With any luck, it’ll come home at the end of the day with a gold star on its report card, but if it comes back full of notes from Teacher, then in life as in school, it’s time to get back on the bus and learn from my mistakes.
So ends my cracked-out fable. I have an odd craving for shiny red apples, milk and cookies now…
Want a sneak peek at the action in “A-Muse-Ing”, coming soon to Loose Id? Click the link for more:
Lisa shook her head, silver ladder of earrings jingling. “Forget it. I’ve got some rough drafts encrypted on my laptop. I’ll polish them up. You get your ass to work on In Outré because Janie’s going to want to know where you are on development and if you’ve got bupkus, we’ll all feel her wrath. We’re so screwed,” she muttered, brushing past him.
Harper watched her go. “Tell me about it,” he mumbled.
“What was that I heard?”
Harper stiffened. Oh, no. No, no, no –
Rory swaggered into his peripheral vision. “That sounded like the dulcet sounds of someone who’s… lookin’ for some inspiration, lookin’ for some inspiration,” he warbled to the tune of Talkin’ About My Generation.
The guy — muse — thing — whatever — did a passable impression of Roger Daltrey.
Harper shunted aside thoughts of guitar smashing, big blue eyes and long twisty curls and rounded on Rory to look at, er, big dark eyes and tarnished-ebony tousles. God, only the strength in Rory’s jaw saved him from being pretty instead of mouthwatering — um.
Rory cocked an eyebrow. “Whatever you’re thinking, your aura says it’s plenty fun. Wanna share with the class?”
Harper shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the brain cobwebs. So Rory was tasty enough to throw down and lick. He’d deal with his libido on his own time.
Honest he would.
“What are you doing here?” he asked instead.
“Now that’s a sight for sore eyes.” Rory held a cardboard tray balanced in one hand. “Look at you. See? Those writerly juices are on the flow.”
Harper capped the marker and tossed it in the whiteboard’s tray. He leaned against the wall, shaking out his tingling fingers. He found himself grinning at Rory. “You know, I bet if you’d thought for days, you couldn’t have come up with a less appealing way to put that.”
“Gripe, gripe, gripe. Here, I brought you actual coffee. Lots of cream.” Rory leered at him.
At least he didn’t strip down. Harper dropped the marker in the whiteboard’s tray, accepted the coffee, and took a long, grateful swig. Not too hot. Perfect temperature, going down smooth and milky.
“Gotta say I like the looks of that, too,” Rory murmured, his gaze fixed in the vicinity of Harper’s throat. “Hotcha, hotcha.”
“Classy.” Harper rolled his eyes, glad of the excuse to play off his body’s rapid reaction to the sensual growl of Rory’s delivery. He collapsed in the head writer’s chair, stretched out his legs and sighed. Relief was a sweet, sweet absence of weight on his shoulders. The caffeine surging through his bloodstream made him nigh giddy. He nudged out a second chair. “Want a seat?”
He groaned at his choice of words while Rory cracked up. “I so very do, but professionalism in the workplace and all.” He spun the chair around backwards and plopped down, propping his chin on the high back. “See? I’m not all bad, am I?”
The traces of milky coffee lingering richly on his tongue inclined Harper to mellowness, and at the same time the clean, spicy fragrance that hovered around Rory imbued the air with something indefinable that kept his brain wide awake. “Don’t count your chickens. I might still come to my senses after the caffeine rush passes.”
“Uh-huh. Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt, my friend.” Rory trailed the pink tip of his tongue over his lips, definitely not addressing his comment to Harper’s face. “You love me already and you know it.”
Written by Willa Okati
Possesses an abundance of crazy ideas, writes constantly, always tries new things, and drinks an insane amount of coffee. Manlove (and femmelove) is more than a passion -- it's a way of life. You can find Willa at http://www.willaokati.com or at her newly-renamed Yahoo group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/got_ink_willaokati
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