Squirrel. Sorry.
Anyway, so I’m now thinking of that group of big, muscled, tough-guy killers in the truck about to go fuck shit up again with all their pew-pews. The way the writing works for me is that I see a movie in my head, and I can watch it as a third person or standing behind anyone’s eyes. After I know what’s going on, and have figured out which POV is required, I then record what I’m shown. Outlines are a must because there are always so many people and plotlines involved, and I don’t start drafting until I’m set on the whole book.
When this part originally came to me, I am in the box truck with them, sitting in the rear, looking at the backs of their heads. I can picture this as clear as when it first came to me, and I can smell the leather jackets, the cologne, that whiff of gun that is all about the cleaning oil my husband uses on his own shotguns. And I’m like grrrr, serious. They’re going to collect some slayers that had been beaten up, and bring them to Butch in the Tomb so he can do his inhale thing. I’ve got dread in my stomach—
And then Syphon, who’s behind the wheel, stomps on the brakes.
Everybody, including me, jerks forward. I’m like fuck, are thelessershere? How’m I going to explain why the enemy got through themhis—
“Who’s got the Jolly Rancher.”
And that’s what it’s like for me. I’m going along, typing like a motherfucker, thinking I know what’s happening, when all of a sudden a scene corkscrews on me.
It’s the best part of my job.
Turns out Syphon can’t stand the smell of watermelon Jolly Ranchers. I had no clue about this aversion, but he is our holistic eater, Mr. Organic-Body-Is-My-Temple and also, he gets car sick which is why he has to drive. As the smell is triggering his gag reflect, the candy’s got to go.
And then everybody goes EWWWWW.
Zypher had spit the thing out the window, except the window was up, not down, so it stuck to the glass.
I remember laughing my ass off at my desk. Just absolutely cracking the hell up. And I can’t tell you how many times over the course of the forty or so books in the BDB series that this has happened: V getting dressed in the dark and showing up at a Brotherhood meeting in unicorn PJ bottoms. Butch and the potato gun. Rhage going on about food at the absolutely wrong time. Someone making a crack about someone else’s dick. Lassiter—well, any scene with him, really—
Cold air rushes at me, and I come back to the present.
Fritz has opened my door, and is standing by at attention, his carriage straight out of the Joffrey Ballet in spite of his age, his uniform so pressed and fitted to perfection it’s like it’s been drawn on him. Even in the wind up here on the summit, his white hair is pomaded into place on a side part.
He leans down. “Challa?”
I wish he’d stop calling me that. It’s a name I haven’t thought of in years. Scribe.
“Right, right. Yup. Coming.”
I’m wearing one of my black dresses that’s too low cut, and I have too many diamonds on. I look like J. R. Ward, even though when I write, I’m myself with frizzy blond hair, flannel PJs and a pink bathrobe. I feel the need for my uniform tonight. I want the distance it gives me, the control, the sense that I am here, but I’m not.
I hide behind the sunglasses. They’re not just because my eyes are bad with bright lights.
I don’t want to be doing this.
As I get out, my stillies pinch my feet, but I won’t notice that for very long. I brought a little notebook and a pen. I leave both of those and my cell phone in the car.
Liz Berry and Jillian Stein, my very dearest friends, are publishing the twentieth anniversaryInsider’s Guide, and we’ve known all along that I have to do updated interviews with the original six Brothers. Unfortunately, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve sat at my computer and had to do other things because this part of the book has just refused to draft. The thing is, I don’t ever get writer’s block, unless I’m ignoring what I’m being shown. And courtesy of that happy little nonnegotiable, whenever I thought about doing generic interviews with the Brotherhood, I swear to God I had nothing. Not one picture, not a voice. Not a presence or a present tense verb.
The problem? Where I was being taken for the interview, what I was seeing in my head, wasn’t something I wanted to do. I didn’t want to loop myself into the shit. I didn’t want to talk about my side of things.
The Brothers won, of course.
Cue what’s happening now.
Oh, and before we keep going, I need to put in a word about time. The past, present and future of Caldwell, NY exist all at once for me. I go back and forth through the different eras whilewriting the books, seeing pieces of history and including them as flashbacks, and showing slices of what’s coming as epilogues.
So yes, right now it’s thirty years ahead in the BDB world, but it’s also the present for me. Because it’s always the present for me, no matter where I am on their calendar. My research assistant is making me put this explanation in. He’s worried otherwise you will picture me as an eighty-five-year-old in heels.
He was like…um, how you going to be walking in stilettos when you’re living in a nursing home?
It’s a fair point.
With that squared away, let’s go back to me, Fritz, and the car.
