When Female Characters Do Stupid Shit

I wrote an article on substack but it's about writing so here it is.

Musings on Characterization by Annemarie Musawale

Spoiler Alert: This is also kind of a rant

Read on Substack

Child of Destiny Series Outtake - Harpreet

Author Notes: Harpreet is an exchange student nurse at the Le Marais Clinic where everyone inevitably ends up. We meet her first at the beginning of Between Death and Heaven when some shit hits the fan. This is her story.

Harpreet slammed the door of the nurse's lounge then winced at the sound. She hadn't meant to be so loud but her hands were trembling and she was dizzy.
Her first brush with death...
And it had to be two dead bodies, who died ugly and painful on the hospital gurneys; as much from willful negligence as the poison coursing through their veins.
And what was with that old lady who appeared? Krishna preserve her from things she didn't understand!
She didn't know what to do with herself. She wanted her mummy now. She glanced at the wall phone, wondering what the hospital policy was on calling international numbers.
"Harpreet?" a voice called from the other side of the door.
She opened her mouth, trying to answer but nothing came out. The room was suddenly very cold.
"Harpreet?" the voice said again and she jumped, startled.
"Y-yes?"
"Let me in. There is an old black lady here who says you might need some help."
Harpreet nodded her head vigorously, still not quite able to talk. It was her hostess on the other side of the door. The family she was staying with while she did her internship in America. Katpurtnick or something; she hadn't mastered their last name yet. She liked them though. The mother was a nurse like she wanted to be; and the father did something in real estate. The son, Miles, was still an unknown quantity. Very secretive. And obsessed with that friend of his...what was his name?
Leonardo or something. Veerrry handsome. Harpreet had felt her heart beat faster when he walked in the house. But he wasn't very nice; ignored her the whole time like she wasn't even there. It's not like she wanted him to shower her with kisses or anything. It would just have been nice if he had shown some interest in her.
"Harpreet?" Mrs. maybe Katpurtnick said again.
She stood quickly and went to open the door.
"Yes Memsahib. Sorry."

"It's alright...Harpreet are you alright?"
She opened her mouth to say yes but the words wouldn't come. Instead, she shook her head.
"Oh honey...I've called my son okay? He's coming to get you, take you home."
Harpreet shook her head frantically, holding back her tears. Memsahib's kindness was really making her miss her mama.
"Yes dear. You need it don't you?" Mrs. K said rubbing Harpreet's arms.
Harpreet found she was nodding her head unawares. Claire Katpurtnick stayed with her until Miles blew into the room, half irritated at having to pick up the exchange student and miss out on whatever he'd planned.
"Come on Harpreet", he said kindly enough though, "I'll take you to Freddie's, get you a nice meat platter."
"I am vegetarian", Harpreet said softly.
That stopped Miles for a second, "No worries. I'm sure there's a salad or something you can eat. They should at least have french fries."
"Okay..." Harpreet hesitated, "Will...your friend Leo be there?"
She just couldn't help herself.
Miles turned briefly, a smile of understanding on her face, "Yeah sure he will", he said.
Harpreet followed him as he led the way out, blushing slightly and thankful that her olive complexion mostly covered it up.

Harpreet was the first female in her family to travel alone for such a great distance. To be alone in a strange land, allowed to stay with strangers...it just wasn't done. But here she was.
The homesickness was the worst.
The lack of familiar food.
The feeling sometimes she got that nobody understood her.
She was a lucky girl and she knew it. Opportunities like this didn't come around every day. And she intended to utilize her time here in the best way possible. It's just that today she'd seen her first two dead bodies. She needed an escape.
She was sitting next to Leo Devereux in the restaurant called Freddie's. Neither he nor Miles was paying much attention to her. Instead they were talking and laughing about things she couldn't understand. Sitting next to Leo was doing funny things to her heart rate but it wasn't enough. She stood up abruptly and they both stopped talking to look at her.
"I..I'm going for a walk."
"Alright", Miles said, "Don't go too far."
"I won't." she replied torn between disappointment that they didn't try to stop her and relief that she could get some fresh air. Freddie's had a permanent barbecue going and the smoke from the grill was making her feel ill with the overwhelming smell of meat.

Leo

Harpreet walked down a small side street, not really paying attention to her environment. Le Marais was a small town; there was zero likelihood that she would get lost. She bumped into a solid body in front of her and stumbled backwards before a hand clamped down on her arm and stopped her certain fall.

"Sorry man, didn't see you there", a raspy voice said. She looked up to see a fairly short yet powerfully built gentleman standing in front of her eyes concerned. He had a five o' clock shadow and a cigarette stuck between his teeth.She opened her mouth to say something...probably smoking kills, when he pulled her close, rubbing at her arms.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded her head, slightly nonplussed and he plucked the cigarette from his lips and offered it to her.

"Hey, have a hit. You look like you need it", he said.

She looked down at the cigarette and then back at him. It looked home made, not like a normal cigarette and it emitted a funny smell.

"Go on. You'll feel better. It's herb", he said.

Oh. Herbs.

If it was made of herbs then it couldn't be all bad. She reached out and took the rolled paper slowly, with the man nodding encouragement at her as she placed it in her mouth and inhaled slowly.

"Good huh?" he said holding out his hand, "I'm Jon by the way."

"H-Harpreet", she replied around the cigarette.

"Pleased to meetcha", he said and pointed at the building he was standing in front of, "this is my bar. Wanna come in?"

Harpeet nodded her head.

END OF PART ONE.
Child of Destiny is found here

Between Death and Heaven: The Phil and Lillian Story

This Isn't Bragging; It's Updating

I recently moved my books that are not priced free to a new publishing platform in addition to smashwords. It handles distribution to Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. I'm finding that people prefer to shop at Amazon than anywhere else because that was the fastest turnaround I've seen in publishing to first sale since I started self publishing. Well...at least for my paid books.

For the free ones, I'm happy to say that The Swamp is Full of Mystery was in the top ten highest downloaded books on free ebooks.net within a week of my posting it. Which is great. I love it. The more exposure the better. And the fact that people are choosing to download my book, among the however many thousands there are on the site?...Awesome.

There is another book of mine that is doing really exceptionally well on all sites it's on. It's a real puzzle to me because first of all, the story is like...eight pages. I wrote it in about half an hour for a competition (I haven't heard back from them and I can't remember the results date or even the site); and I decided to post it because why not? And now it's been on free ebooks like for five minutes and a hundred people have downloaded it. I am truly stymied. There is just no predicting this shit.

I'm thinking maybe I should expand it to a full fledged novel. Just go to pacemaker and make out a six month plan for writing and editing. I don't know. Do I have more story? Of course I have. It's like, a given at this point. The question is, do I want to write it? I'm in the middle of Child of Destiny - Marcus Deveraux which I've kind of put aside to concentrate on work and promoting the other books first; kind of get the momentum going....

But.
Yeah.
So hit me up if you've read it and let me know what you think I should do.
The story is called Cinderella By Any Other Name.

What If...

This week's prompt is about this so I thought why not go back to the original story and reimagine it. Jesus? Mary Magdalene? Welcome to 2015.

Mary Magdalene woke up late, her head throbbing with misery. Tequila was really the devil; newsflash. Somebody needed to tweet that. Not her though. Someone else. She could hear her notifications going off at the rate of a mile a minute and she knew what it was about. She knew she was being trolled like nobody’s business. It was that nude pic that Rick had posted of her. Her friends had warned her about him being a nasty piece of work; but did she listen? Nooo, she went ahead and let him woo her into an affair. Even though she knew he was married to that Paris chick. He said his wife didn’t understand him; that she was cold to him in bed. He’d been so needy. How was Mary to know that he was a stinkin liar. Well…okay, maybe there were signs. For one thing, his Facebook page was full of pictures of him and his supposedly cold wife doing fun things together. Rick had told her that it was all show. Just for the cameras. That as soon as they got home, Paris barely spoke to him. Who was she to dispute that? Heaven knew she’d never been married so she didn’t know that married people did or didn’t behave like that. Besides he was so nice to her, so attentive. He picked up every time she called; texted her like two hundred times a day. It was intoxicating. Plus there was that Mazda he’d bought her for her birthday – to show her how much he cared he’d said. Okay so it turned out to be leased and she’d had to pay like a thousand dollars  which Rick had neglected to pay…he’d apologized so sincerely. Said he’d forgotten to pay that cash and promised to pay her back. I mean he was so sweet! Who wouldn’t be taken in?

When he’d asked if he could take her picture naked, just so he had something to look at when he was lonely, how could she say no. besides they were really classy. Only one really showed her cunt; and it was a pretty cunt anyway; all womanscaped and such…she was proud of it. In fact, Rick had also promised to get her some cash so she could have it vagazzled. I mean, how cool would that be?

But then…last night, she’d gone to surprise him at his club appearance in Miami and she’d caught him tongue wrestling some other chick. Some tall blonde leggy slut with obviously plastic double d’s and a body modeled on Barbie. Mary hadn’t been able to control herself. She was so mad. She’d grabbed at Rick’s drink and thrown it in his face, badly stinging his eye. Then she’d called him a cheating liar and left the club. Too bad that TMZ had been on the scene and taken a video of the whole thing. Worse, Barbie girl found Mary’s nude pics on Rick’s phone and posted them online. Ever since, she’d been getting nasty messages from trolls and she didn’t know what to do.

rickswife67 wrote: kill yourself bitch. You’re nothing but a husband stealing slut!!!

nastygalzsquad wrote: your vagina looks like it smells of patchouli and regret.

videovixen78 wrote: If I ever find u anywea nia ma man I’ll burn your nipples off cunt

kissmyattitude wrote: whore. God will punish you for being a husband stealer

songsoffireandice wrote: if u wa in GOT they’d have made u walk in the street naked already. SHAME on you.

Mary scrolled miserably through her notifications, looking for she knew not what. Would it stop soon or would she be hounded off social media forever? She couldn’t leave! Social media was her life; she might as well be dead without it. She tried tweeting some positive uplifting messages to maybe shame the trolls into leaving her alone but they just responded with even more gusto.

kissmyattitude wrote: you have nerve to even get on here with u’re fake messages. We know who yu r bitch.

pharisee123 wrote: yeah, go on run u’re lil bitch ass outta here slutty mcsluttington. How you even show your face? Your cunt looks sick

devotee101 wrote: YOU HAVE AIDS!! YOU’RE GONNA DIE.

fiftyshadesoffierce wrote: bitch u luk lik a man. Ugly ass vagina.

Mary threw her phone across the room with an anguished cry. It was the new iPhone 6 and the screen cracked as it hit the linoleum. Mary screamed even louder. She wasn’t anywhere near finished paying for that thing. And now it was broken.

“God!” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks in despair. There was a soft knocking at the door. Mary stopped crying to listen.

“Mary? You in there? I heard screaming. Are you alright?” a soft voice floated in from the other side of the door.

“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously. Had her trolls found out where she lived.

“My name is Jesus. I live just down the hall from you?” he said.

Mary hesitated for a moment but then shrugged. If this was her day to die from some crazed ax man at her door well…it was a good day. She was just about done. She opened the door to behold a Persian guy of middling height, long brown hair tied in a pony tail low on his head and beard flourishing on his face.

“Is everything alright Mary?” he asked.

She shrugged, “I guess you don’t do social media much huh?” she said.

Jesus smiled, “Not really”, he said.

“Come in”, she said stepping back and letting him into her apartment.

“thanks” he said as he stepped in. he reached down, and picked up her phone, handing it to her. inexplicably, the screen was repaired.

“Is there anything I can do for you Mary?” he asked.

She smiled wryly, “Can you stop people trolling me on twitter?” she asked.

Jesus smiled and kissed her forehead, “Is that all?” he asked.

“Yeah”, she said.

“Consider it done”, he said and suddenly the constantly beeping notifications stopped. Mary stared at him.

“Why…? How…?” she stammered in disbelief.

Jesus smiled, “Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone”, he said, “Or tweet as the case may be.”

Mary bent her head, tears leaking in gratitude. Jesus stroked her hair, “Go forth Mary Magdalene, and do not sin again”, he said.

Keeping It Real

A close friend told me about a mutual acquaintance's new husband who is apparently having a hard time with the fact that he has a new family which he has to provide for. He keeps saying stuff about how he can't believe this is his life and he never dreamed that his life would turn out this way. He says it aloud as well, in the hearing of his wife...what. an. asshole.

Anyway so when I heard about that, I wondered what would be the best remedy to get him to slap out of it. I mean what kind of jerk says such a thing. But then when you really think about it, the average guy does tend to be a rather selfish bastard unless there is something in it for them. And I guess having a baby and a wife doesn't count in this guy's case.

Which brings me to the stories we as womenz tell ourselves in order to reconcile our perfect 'Mills and Boon Man' with the actual reality out there. I mean, the movie 'He's Just Not That Into You' was made to disabuse womenz of that very premise. That we should stop telling ourselves these stories that we make up to account for the fact that your man is a grade A bastard with no redeeming qualities.

It's a dichotomy I struggled with when writing. On the one hand, the whole point of reading books is to escape from reality. That's why Harry Potter, The Man in Black, Jamie Fraser, Father Emilio Sandoz, Sam and Dean Winchester and alla dem, are all larger than life.They're what we wish and hope and dream of to find in real life. However, they don't really exist in real life; do they?

This is Leo to the life

So when I was writing Leo into existence I wanted him to be so real that he could maybe actually exist in real life. I wanted him to have typical male imperfections; I wanted him to be as selfish and self-absorbed as the average teen, as unhappy and all about himself as any lonely neglected teenager would be...and yet, something special about him that would allow us all to fall in love with him, not in spite of his faults but because of them. Its a delicate line to maneuver. I don't know if I nailed it. You'll have to tell me when the book goes live.