So, not Sunday, and not seven sentences, and no sex this time around. But it’s always fun when Jan Sleet quotes Sherlock Holmes:

 
In the morning, SarahBeth was the last one up. She came out of Perry’s bedroom when the others were already eating breakfast. Her hair was tied back and she was dressed simply in a T-shirt and jeans.

She came up and put a hand on Perry’s shoulder. “Perry, I think we should go back to U-town. We really didn’t give it a fair chance. I’m going, and I hope you’ll come with me. But I think I’m going anyway.” Vicki kicked her in the ankle. “I’m going anyway,” she finished, “and I would really like it if you’d come with me.”

Perry looked up at her for a moment, then put his hand on top of hers as he turned to the others.

“My non-monogamous, underage, incestuous, lesbian girlfriend and I would love to come,” he said, holding her hand firmly as she tried to pull it away.

Jan Sleet, smiling, raised her mug in a kind of salute. “Perry,” she said, “you’re developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humor. We’ll have to start being more careful around you.”

(For earlier entries in this series, go here.)

So, yes, increasingly, not on Sunday and not seven sentences.

Oh, well.

If I ever finish this book (the infamous “third novel”), and if at some future date somebody does an overall study of my oeuvre — I would be hard pressed to say which of these is less likely — this book would definitely be classified as “the one with all the sex.”

This chapter, “A Visit to Perry,” is where the real plot begins. There are a few sex scenes in this chapter, but I decided to feature this one because it’s amusing, it doesn’t reveal any major plot points, and it features a character I haven’t written about in a while.

It’s SFW, unless you have a really prudish employer.

 
The small house had become a little claustrophobic, and Marshall had decided to go for a walk. The evening air was cool, and the little gravel road was quiet.

“It’s good that you came here,” said a quiet voice.

He looked around, knowing that he wouldn’t see anything. “Hi,” he said. “I was really thinking that this was a big waste of time.”

Randi laughed. “I know. But it’s good, for a variety of reasons. So, don’t be in any hurry to get back. Perry and SarahBeth have to work through some things, and so do SarahBeth and Vicki. That’s a very complex relationship, as you can probably tell.”

“I think any relationship with SarahBeth in it would be complicated.”

Randi chuckled. “You are very right. She is a piece of work, isn’t she? I’m glad she’s not one of mine.”

There was a turn in the path, and they came upon a small gazebo. It was beautiful in the moonlight. Marshall noticed a long couch with many cushions, and a small table with bottles and glasses.

Randi, slowly becoming visible, took his hand and led him to the couch.

“This is starting to look like a compromising position for a married man,” he said with a small laugh.

She pulled him down beside her on the couch. Her smile was impish, her hair was long and dark and full, and her nightgown was sheer.

He looked around. “This is a dream, right? Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” she said, gently pushing him down so he was lying on the couch. “Dreams don’t count as infidelity, or nobody could ever be considered faithful.” (She whispered, “close your eyes,” as she continued speaking in her normal voice.)

So, the Sunday thing didn’t take, and the seven-sentence rule isn’t being followed either, but I am going to continue this series.

Having covered A Sane Woman and U-town, I’m going to move on to my third novel (first draft completed, project now on hold indefinitely, no fixed title). My plan is to post a scene from each chapter (each in a separate post — not all at once).

I don’t think I’m going to restart the project any time soon, but there are some good scenes in there. I like to go back and look at it from time to time.

This is from the first section, called “Always Crashing in the Same Car.” It’s not directly connected to the novel that follows, but it leads into it, both in plot and themes. I guess it’s one of those prologues that have such a bad reputation. It stands alone pretty well — I think I’ll post the whole thing here as soon as I clean it up.

Also, this was the first story in my plan — for some reason — to write stories named after three songs on David Bowie’s album Low. I have no idea why I have this plan (which been pn my To Do list for years now). It’s not because of any particular enthusiasm for the album, which is not in my Top Five David Bowie Albums list (or it wouldn’t be if I had such a list).

The other two songs are “Sound and Vision” and “A New Career in a New Town.” I haven’t written those stories yet, though it just occurs to me now that the latter would be a good subtitle for Stevie One

Anyway, here are seven paragraphs.

 
Coming around the final bend to my house, Ruth stopped suddenly, and after a second I saw what she saw and stopped also.

Celia and the mystery girl were sitting on the beach, talking. I was about to walk forward, to let them know we were there, but at that moment the mystery girl stood up and held out her hand to Celia. My friend looked uncertain, which was unusual for her.

Before I could resume my forward motion, the girl shucked off her denim vest and dropped it to the sand. She didn’t have her leather jacket on.

She looked healthy and invigorated, her attention focused entirely on Celia. It was hard to imagine that she’d been in a motorcycle accident and then unconscious just an hour or two earlier.

Then, making the decision for us about to whether to approach them or not, the girl slowly unbuttoned her shirt and dropped it to the sand as well. She wore a low-cut black bra that showed the pale upper slopes of her breasts in the moonlight, and that apparently made Celia’s decision for her. She reached out, took the girl’s hand and stood up.

They embraced, and then, very slowly, they started to move, first swaying and then, gradually, they started dancing.

As they moved slowly across the sand, embracing tightly, they turned so that the girl was looking at us over Celia’s shoulder. We dropped to the sand, but I was sure she saw us in the moment before we could react. Her only reaction was a faint smile.

So, this is the second in the series of Seven Sentence Sundays, and now we come to U-town, my second novel.

This was started in the early 1990s, and A Sane Woman put on hold, because I got a modem.

It was local BBSs in those days (the web didn’t exist yet, the Internet existed but was difficult to get access to if you weren’t in college, and services like CompuServe and AOL cost money), and I quickly realized that 1) I wanted to post my writing online, for free, and 2) A Sane Woman was not paced properly for online reading. The rhythm was wrong.

Also, the chapbooks cost so much to make that I lost money on each one — so there wasn’t much incentive to try to sell a lot of them.

So, I put that project on pause and started the story that became U-town. It is primarily the story of a place, and it has a large cast of characters, but no clear protagonist. It is the most pantsed thing I’ve ever written, so it pretty clearly shows both what can be achieved by just letting things happen, and some of the problems, too.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite parts, called “Like Crazy Paving” — a title that pleases me because it works on several different levels.

This is more than seven sentences, but after all it’s a very long book.

 
Then, suddenly, there was a pounding on the apartment door. “Pete! Pete! For God’s sake, let me in! Pete, please!” Pete opened his eyes again. It didn’t feel like he had been asleep at all.

Looking around, he wished he had a camera. Chet stood in the middle of the room, frozen in mid-tiptoe. He was coming from the bedroom and obviously heading for the door to the hall. He was carrying his shoes in one hand.

starling was sitting up in her sleeping bag, apparently startled awake, her revolver held in both hands and pointed right at Chet. Chet glanced from her to Pete, still frozen in place, and grinned nervously.

“Hi,” he said.

So, it’s 2015. It occurred to me today that I’ve always said that I started writing seriously in 1970. So, that’s (according to my calculator) 45 years ago.

Huh.

Of course, it’s not like I started on any one particular day. But it was some time around 1970 that I started writing pretty seriously, almost every day.

I don’t think I ever said, “I want to be a writer” (let alone an “author,” which has always sounded incredibly pompous to me). I just wanted to write. Writing was (and is) more fun than not writing.

So, I thought it would be fun to look back at what I’ve managed to produce over that time span. First I was going to write one big blog post, covering everything, but that seemed like it would be exhausting to write, and probably exhausting to read as well.

Then I read about this thing called “Seven Sentences Sunday,” which I learned about at Tiyana’s blog (hey, Tiyana’s posting again — drop in and say Hi!). So, I’m kind of adopting that idea, though with a twist, since these are not works in progress.

(And obviously I got it wrong to start with, since it’s apparently supposed to be eight sentences, but I remembered it as seven when I was writing this — probably drawn by the alliteration.)

Starting today, every Sunday I will post seven sentences (or eight, I guess) from one of the things I’ve written, with a little commentary. I’m going to start at the beginning and take them in order.

 
1. A Sane Woman

For my first twenty years of writing, I mostly produced junk. All of which is (happily) not locatable by any search engine you can possibly use, because the Web didn’t exist back then.

Heh, heh.

In 1990, I hit on the idea of serial publication, and started to write A Sane Woman, a novel which was published in little monthly chapbooks (yes, paper). There are a couple of things I’d do differently if I was writing it now, but I’m still pretty pleased with it.

It’s available in book form here. It’s available on the web here, or if you want it all in one file (specially formatted for e-readers), you can go here.

Here’s seven sentences. This is the “inciting event,” or whatever they call it in the how-to manuals, and it turned out to be exactly seven sentences long, so it was the obvious choice:

 
Perry found himself thinking how nice it would be to go home. Then he sat bolt upright as a howl of anguish came from Sam’s room. He stumbled to his feet and crashed into Sarah as he ran to Sam’s room.

They opened the door all the way and stood transfixed in the doorway. Sam stood naked, his back against the wall, looking at the bed. The bedclothes were tangled and ripped, and covered in blood. There was no sign of Terry.