Mushy corners of a dark mind
Sunday, November 27, 2005, 6:27 PM

I was reading one of the stories I began almost ten years (oh. my. god.) ago. The prose is passive and dated (and screams how little I know about music ... stuff), and too closely mimics Sharon and Thomas Curtis, but I still get a kick out of this piece whenever I read it. It's a story about a shy girl who hasn't yet figured out that life is passing her by. But then her best friend's boyfriend, a rising rock star, explodes on the scene and things grow complicated.

Sounds trite, doesn't it? Probably why I never finished it.

Anyway, these are some of my favorite paragraphs. This scene was a blast to write. I remember listening to the songs I was writing about at the time I wrote them and feeling star-struck right along with my heroine, Shannon.

Imagine the thrill I feel when I write a love scene.

~*~*~*~

A lone spotlight picked the keyboardist out first, then widened to include two male guitarists and a female drummer. Dev Caulfield stood behind the keyboard at the right front of the stage, his attention focused on the keys. When he lifted his face a moment later, it was to stare directly up into their corner. His first softly uttered words caused a scattering of screams in the audience.

“You are so beautiful . . . .”

It was a heady experience for Shannon, seeming as it did that he directed his attention right at her. But there was really no reason to act like a boob because with the light shining into his eyes, it was unlikely that he could tell her apart from the ceiling support post beside her. In any case, he was singing the song for Wendy and maybe, unofficially, for Olivia. She might as well have been that darn post.

She shoved the realization aside for later and draped her arms across the banister, falling a little in love with him at the moment along with the rest of the females present. There was really nothing about him that suggested he was a star on the rise, other than his incredible presence. Dressed casually in snug black pants and a white painter's shirt, he put his magic into the words and his expression. His movements above the keys were slight, his body at ease, his face open to the audience. The song was an old one, a slow one, but the effect it had on Shannon was staggering enough that he could have been hook-nosed and hump-backed and still have sent her pulse out of whack.

Two six foot projector screens hung high at both ends of the stage, showing the detail of what couldn’t be seen at thirty paces away. Close-ups were shown of each of the performers and Shannon waited in suspended time for his. When it came, she saw wavy, black hair that looked like it had been finger-combed. Black eyebrows arched wing-like over heavy-lidded eyes. His cheekbones were high-set, the nose long and flaring at the nostrils. He had a strong, well-shaped mouth that he used to advantage, pursing, tensing or curving his lips in accordance to what the song evoked. Shannon unthinkingly tried to imitate him, and then glanced around guiltily when she discovered herself at it.

The girls at the foot of the stage screamed for his attention when he abandoned the keyboard during the next song. She found it hard to keep her mouth from dropping open as he moved with lissome grace across the stage in time to the beat of the music. He must have been in phenomenal shape because his voice in the microphone didn’t sound winded at all. He had an amazing range of pitch, at one moment sounding sexily tender, and in the next throwing out a deep yell. When he treated them to a taste of Michael Jackson moves during Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus, she saw one of the girls up front fall in a dead faint. Reach out and touch me, indeed.

When he strolled off the stage two hours later, she blinked as if waking from a trance.

~*~*~*~

I have a different writer's voice now. Ever since the influence of La Femme Nikita, the tone of my mind, as it concerns romance writing, has been altered. I want to write more than easy-to-swallow fluff, even though the fluff is easier to write. I've tried to go back to writing it, to find my roots again, but I can't do it. My internal editor has a whip and she likes cracking it.

I've been mulling the idea of delving back into La Femme Nikita fanfic. I'm very good at writing LFN fic. I like to "flesh" out the episodes that were aired, to send my writer's psyche behind the scenes and into the character's heads. That's how O-Bug was born. He's omniscient (something that made me feel powerful).

I have to get that feeling back. Yes, yes, yes.

The show is definitely worth my time and would get me back into the discipline of writing (and teach me how to write espionage a la that dark flair I crave and love).

Hmm.
8 Did the Unhingey Jiggy Engage in Unhingenosity
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