Studio 30+ Prompt writing -Little Red Riding in the Hood

 I've recently joined Studio 30+ to help kick my writing up a lot of notches, make some contacts and get some feedback. I wrote this piece on the fly this afternoon, in response to the Studio 30+ prompts for the week, which were Apple and/or Infection.  Please don't judge it too harshly. I have no idea where it's going, or even where it came from (other than my brain). It is simply a literal use of the prompts that i wrote in an hour. So... phew... nervous much? I am! Here you go. 

Little Red Riding in the Hood

As she cruised down Main Street in her candy apple red convertible she looked for him on the sidewalks while she drove. “He has to be here”, she thought, “has to, damn it. I need to finish this once and for all”. She turned down the radio and tapped the brakes a bit, hoping that slowing down would help her spot him more easily. “Where is he?” Her ma’s words from their telephone conversation that morning went through her mind. “You listen to me Mary-Kathleen Mahoney, some boyos aren't worth the trouble, they think only of themselves and are selfish runts.”  “I know ma” MK said.  “And then there’s some,” her ma continued, “well, there’s some that are just rotten to the core. Like that Scott who broke your heart. Best thing that ever happened to you was when he left ya. Cause those rotten ones, well they end up doing more than heart breaking and nothing ever can be changed with ‘em. Like something’s missing inside where their feelings should be. As if they have some sort of infection that makes them dead in the soul. He was a psychopath for sure. “

Leave it to Ma to watch one too many Dr. Phil shows, so she thinks she’s an armchair psychiatrist, thought MK. God, dramatic much, ma? Though, as she looked for the ‘psychopathic’ Scott on the sidewalks of Main Street, MK wondered if there wasn’t a little truth to what her Ma was preaching.  He’d been different, so aloof and above it all, when she’d met him 18 months before. Truth be told, that’s probably why she was attracted to him at first. Only now, when she thought back to their relationship, could she see the pieces of the puzzle that didn't quite fit. Those last few months they were together, he would go from happy to angry in the drop of a dime. Drape his arm across her shoulders in a loving hug that would get just a bit too tight as he told her what she had done wrong that day. And it seemed she had always done something wrong. Scott made MK feel like she was never quite enough… not smart enough, or thin enough or pretty enough.  His parting words were “You’re fat and ugly and no one will ever want to be with you. Christ MK, you can’t even have kids.” She still remembered the pain of that proclamation, she remembered believing it too. As if surviving ovarian cancer should make her less of a person, less of a woman. 

MK had spent the last 6 months, since the breakup with Scott, transforming herself. She hadn't answered his calls or even run into him on the street. He had no idea she’d gone from frump to fabulous. Watching what she ate, and working out every day. She had taken up running and was up every morning to put in 5 miles before her day started.  She’d grown her short hair out and colored it a more reddish brown to play up her green eyes.  And with each pound lost, each mile run, MK had started to find herself.  She’d started to appreciate herself more and find her confidence again. “Screw you, Scott,” MK said out loud to herself, “You’ll see what you lost, what you threw away. And you’ll be the one who regrets it, until the day you die.”

Mary-Kathleen Mahoney had no idea just how right she was, because in less than 24 hours, psychopath or not, Scott would be dead and she would be the one who killed him.

FEED ME SEYMOUR...

You may have seen on my Facebook,  or heard me talk at various times, about writing my book. Here is a little bit of what I have been doing since I was lucky enough to become free for the summer...

I have been trying to get myself organized so I can get this latest book out of my head, and on to the paper.  This one is a fiction book, set in Rehoboth Beach, about a girl who is opening an Irish bar. There's a stalker, a murder, love, laughter and drag queens.  I've also been working, at the same time, on the This is Me, Damn It book, trying to finish it up and arrange it correctly. 

As you can see, I so need to get my office up and running. Teaching myself the difference between THEN and THAN. How to keep my participles from dangling (it's never good to let those things just dangle )and my sentences from being in the 1st and 3rd person all at once. It's been a while since I've studied English and the written word. More precisely, how to write it, so it is correct and readable. Too many comma's, should I use a colon or a semi colon?  You see what I mean?

These are my notebooks for the Fiction book. One each for characters, the bar & the Irish details, the setting & the town, and the actual story outlines. I've got to place, buy and rehab a bar, in an existing town. So I need to know all about those details. Then I have basic Irish (gaelic) that I need to learn since the lead characters parents are immigrants who speak the Irish occasionally. The history of Rehoboth, the streets they will walk on, the shops they will pass.  Down to the lay out of the bar and where the dumpster will be - (there is a huge plot point that happens by the dumpsters - no NOT sex LOL)

This is 2/3rd's of  my magnetic poetry board, it keeps me a from getting stuck. When I feel like I am locked up I play around with it to get the juices flowing. I feel like I have so much running around my brain at once, that finding the quiet I need to have things sink in, is not happening. 

At the same time, I have yearning to learn all I can, FEED ME like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. Only mine is an insatiable hunger for knowledge. If I could, I would go back to school in a minute. If I didn't have to worry about money (hello lottery) I would study psychology. If I had to make money at the same time I was learning, I would study accounting. Forensic accounting to be exact w/ the basics to fall back on to earn $$. Forensic accounting is where you follow the money and investigate for the discrepancies. With my fraud and bookkeeping background I think it would be a great fit. I could work when I needed money and write the rest of the time. 

But, you need money to go to school, and that's something I don't have. So for now, I feed Seymour with my own lessons. And I write, write, write and oh yeah... I write.  

So that's what I'm doing on my summer vacation.