When it's not epic

I've participated in a couple of Writer's Digest online seminars, one featuring Kristin Nelson and one feature Sara Megibow both from the Nelson Agency. During Kristin's presentation, she mentioned that the main plot of your book, that first serious hook, should occur within the first 30-50 manuscript pages.

Now this took me back. Having come up in epic fantasy (even though I'm currently not writing epic), the plot often started well past 50 pages. Often it doesn't start until the second book! :) Was it possible to drop the hook that early?

So I looked at the various single-volume fantasies I was writing at the time and with the exception of one, they all dropped their hooks in the first fifty pages. That one that didn't? It ended up getting rewritten and conforms to that as well (in Times New Roman, Courier pushed me over by a couple pages). It has proven to be not so much an invaluable rule as it is an obvious rule. With an average-lengthed novel (so we're not including epic), a story without a hook at the beginning just feels like a meandering exploration of the writer's imagination. That's all well and good, but we're reading the book for a story and eventually we need to start down that path.

Keep in mind I'm just talking a hook here. We don't necessarily need to blaze a trail down the story (though I fall mostly in Twain's camp¹ on what should happen in any given chapter). Just something to promise the reader, "Yes, this is going somewhere."

And that was so exciting about PRINCE OF CATS. I didn't just have the hook, I came up with a good chunk of the story all at once. (Surprisingly, it's the end that eludes me as I keep debating whether I should kill a bunch of characters or not.) The thing was, once I started writing, the hook kept getting farther and farther away. Hello page 80. I'll get to the hook soon. I promise. Just 20 more pages or so.

And it wasn't working. I had all these dramatic moments that weren't that dramatic because there were no stakes involved. Unless we're reading this thing just so we can watch Mirza and find out his uncle-turned-father² has been lying all these years about how his mother died, in which case we're all set by chapter 12.

So I took chapters 8-12 and shoved them back. They'll still appear. They're good stuff, but first I need a hook. Because once there's something at risk, then we're not just learning about Mirza, we're seeing how Mirza responds to what he learns and wonder as to the fate of Shahzadi Parisa. Then all these secrets about his mother have the heft they deserve.

Unfortunately, turning the uncle into the father and then shoving 4 1/2 chapters back has really thrown a wrench into the gears of my rhythm. I have been cranking this story out, and now I've come full stop while I insert the separator and crank everything apart. Then I have to go through and make sure everything fits together. Usually this is saved for the second draft. But hey, it'll save me reweriting in the future. Hopefully when I'm back at work and not staying home to deal with construction people³, I can get make to a more acceptable level of progress.


¹ Mark Twain famously said that each chapter should advance the plot or advance the story else it should be cut from the story entirely. While I don't hold to this 100% of the time, I hold to it 99.5% of the time.

² I realized the other day that I had fallen into the MG/YA cliche of making my main character an orphan. In adult work, I try to stay away from all the character tropes that have been bludgeoned to death over the years. I don't have characters that are orphans. I have characters that had loving, well-adjusted parents, so their own eccentricities are just that. No need for the orphan who's sworn an oath to hunt down his paretns' killer. Batman has had that covered for near on a century.

³ We had a furnace leak that grew a healthy amount of mold in our basement. This has been an incredible headache. I do not advise it.

Can I Do This?

If you were lucky enough to be Liz Poole, a hotel night auditor named LurkerWithout, or an agent with incredible literary sense, you would have had the opportunity to read my manuscript JEHOVAH'S HITLIST. This is a manuscript where I explain why just because the protagonist is 15 years old doesn't make it a young adult novel. The thing is anything but a young adult novel. ...depending on how you wish to raise your children. If you're okay with intense amounts of violence, profanity, nudity, sex, and drugs, then perhaps this is a YA book. Otherwise, we'll just assume it's not.

I've mentioned that before, so why am I saying it again? Because now I am writing a young adult novel. More specifically, I'm writing a middle grade novel (for a younger audience than YA, if you don't know the difference). Things are going swimmingly. I've only been at it for a week and I'm about to hit the 20,000-word mark. That's progress! Things are going great!

Well...yes, but I'm starting to run into something the euphoria of being so prolific has to date kept at bay. I've never written for this audience before! I write hard, cruel adult content. How am I supposed to write for 10 year olds?!?! Here I am cruising along and they have THE HOBBIT and A WRINKLE IN TIME and HARRY POTTER to read. What is this? PRINCE OF CATS? It's nothing. It's tiny. It's not my market!

*pulls out hair*

Who would have thought that the hardest thing for me to write would be content for kids. You wouldn't think so until you try it. But once you try it, you're all ooohhh, now I see.

Like if I were to write Sesame Street, this is what you'd get:

A Triumphant Return

So here I am. :) The busy season has passed. At least until it arrives again (which for me will be January). This year (in my new department) hasn't been even half as bad as the two previous where I was expected to work 14-hour days with weekends and basically go balls to the wall until the summer was gone. I love New Hampshire weather because it has four seasons, but I was skipping one of them and that wasn't as much fun.

I have continued to write, another thing that was difficult in the summer. I have been rewriting Wanted: Chosen One which is now titled With a Crooked Crown. Let me tell you how much work that has been. I thought it would be an up-front slog while I bent the first half of the book like a contortionist and then just some mopping up to clean up the dust. Not so! Change the main character to a person that was a secondary character and that takes a lot of work. More over, change one of the negative characters to someone less negative and you start to realize he had to get his bitch on in every chapter he was in. Every time I say I'm almost done, I have to stop and rewrite entire chapters.

This weekend I did some prep work on my next book. I don't always do character designs and such before I start writing. Often I don't know the characters to be involved and those I think will be of use end up never fitting into the evolution of the story. But I have a very clear picture of this story. Very clear. I already have names for ten characters and that never happens! So that's kind of thrilling and kind of frustrating at the same time because I can't work on it until I finish my rewrite. So close! So far away! (I spent the morning rewriting a chapter and have spent my lunch hour rewriting the rewrite to change the POV to a different character. :)

And I will leave you with this. My wife just read A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, as we are both fans of the series (books--we haven't seen the HBO show yet). By the end of A FEAST FOR CROWS I had picked up on Martin's chapter template: introduce characters, eat/describe what they're wearing, have something important happen. So I would read the first page to see who was around and then the last two pages of a chapter to see what happens. I'd skip all the description because after four books, I got it.

Well, according to the missus, he's actually increased his description of food, which may be difficult to comprehend. Her question was obvious? Why?! To date, I had just assumed it was his style, but then I wondered, is he doing this on purpose?

The answer slapped me like a person that's been sitting next to you on the couch for the entire movie and you didn't even know they were there. Yes he's doing it on purpose. In the very first book Ned Stark says people aren't saving enough for winter. Summer had gone on too long and people forgot how much food they needed to save for winter. So here is all this opulence, all these people feasting and gorging and being all disgusting. Why? Because the next book is named THE WINDS OF WINTER and you want to guess how hungry they're going to be then? It's a 50-calibre metaphor shot through five books so the sixth one can properly juxtapose their situation.

It's the opposite of the soft touch. It's the jackhammer. Or it's just his style. We'll see.

My Nemesis, Progress!

A bit of a note, I am still swamped at work though that should be clearing up at the beginning of August or thereabouts. Lots of nonsense going on right now, but I am well versed in Alice's time in Wonderland and through the Looking Glass so nonsense is right up my alley. (Do not judge that I live up an alley. We all fall on hard times sometime in our lives.)

Because I've been so busy, I've been writing down post titles of stuff I want to post but will have to get to later. You can imagine that this is as successful as writing down a book title and remembering the idea later. To that end, my post on adverbs last week had one major omission, the original point of the post! "Just the Adverbs" was a specific title I chose because the word just can be used as an adjective or as an adverb. And when used as an adverb, it really weakens your sentence. That is one of those adverbs where King and I agree. I almost always take it out when I see it. Unfortunately, I see it a lot in my own writing. In first draft, it seems to connote a triviality or an understanding of totality that in second draft review appears more as broken rhythm and indecisive imagery. If you're not using just as an adjective, chop it out. Your sentence will read much stronger for it.

Speaking of weaker, that brings us today's topic. It may be my folksy Midwestern upbringing or it may be some subconscious attempt to be less direct (something I'm told I need to be). For whatever reason, I tend to use progressive verbs WAY more often than is necessary.

I hope you can help me with this = I am hoping you can help me with this.

All. The. Time. If I were Superman, progressive verbs would be my green kryptonite (I was going to make a red kryptonite joke here, but reading through the Wikipedia entry for kryptonite just reminds me how much I dislike Superman and his entire canon).

A rhythm that I use to the point that one of my beta readers pointed it out to me is an independent clause comma progressive verb. He typed on the keyboard, thinking of all the times he wrote similar sentences.

Oh me and the ING are good friends. Too good, maybe. Me and ING need some space apart. Set it free and if it comes back, and all that. Maybe? Yes? No? I love you, ING! Don't go!

And with that, I go back to work. See you guys soon. For real this time. ;)

(How's your summer going? Did you hear that Nate Wilson had a son? They let him reproduce. The wonders of modern science. Wish him and the Professor well.)

Weak Words: Just the Adverb, Ma'am

I had this post planned awhile ago but all I saved was the title. I vaguely remember what it was about, but it ties well into a discussion I am having with Liz Poole about feedback I received recently.

First, here's a general rule that I learned the hard way. If you are going to critique, never rewrite the person's work. You can suggest subtractions and you can point out instances where things need to improve, but NEVER actually try to improve them yourself. It is not your work. If you try to rewrite, not only will the author ignore that feedback, he/she will ignore ALL your feedback. You are no longer critting. You're saying that it's not the way you would have done it, which is different.

Second, NOT ALL ADVERBS ARE BAD! I know people treat Stephen King's ON WRITING like a writing bible, but it was not chiseled in stone. His comment not to use adverbs is a hyperbole, trying to show you how much weaker adverbs make your sentences than other means of writing. When you tell someone "never do that" what you're hoping is that the don't do it very often instead of doing it all the time, which is what King is doing here. You're using an adverb instead of a stronger verb. Go use the stronger verb instead.

Strangely, what I see happening as a reaction to this order from on high is that authors are overwriting. They are using entire sentences (sometimes paragraphs) to describe what they could have with a single adverb. While imagery and strong verbs are great, I don't need you stopping the story ever other paragraph so you can wax poetic with your non-adverb.

There are adverbs I enjoy, just for the sound of them (punctiliously in particular). Best selling authors use them, if you're tethered to having a justification for using a type of word that is a valid part of English grammar. Set your adverb meter to two, but if you're going to offer critiques, pinging something just because it's an adverb is lame. Your goal is to help the author attain the strongest writing possible. Rote regurgitation is not how that's accomplished.

Verily.

Anti-Social Socializing

I am not anti-social. In fact, I love being the center of attention. I have wanted to be the storyteller since I was five, lying about the size of the frog I caught¹. The trick is, there are a lot of social situations where I cannot be the center of attention, and in those cases I find I would much rather be writing.

Most often, this is a barbershop party. My wife is in a competitive a capela barbershop chorus and quartet and those folks love to party. When they party, they sing. I can't sing². So I hang out while they sing. They're good people and we converse at times, but really, it's a party where everyone else is singing. I would rather write, but I feel that's rude. I don't want to sit in the corner on my computer. So...I sit in the corner with my liquor. It's marginally more social.

Any more, it seems I measure all social engagements against writing time. Knowing that I've already had two hours to write that day, would the time spent socializing be more fun than more writing. If yes, then yay! If no, then...can I bring my computer just in case?



¹ It was THIS big!

² I'm told I could sing very well with proper training, but I consider that training writing time and would not sacrifice the one for the other.

The Bill of Rights c.1791

The general rule is that no sign exists until after someone does what the sign instructs not to do (thus my favorite sign is "Do not lick the C-4"). You should consider the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution much like a sign. The reason why those 10 items were enumerated? Because they happened.

I bring this up because one of the most frequent mistakes I see by fantasy authors is applying modern freedoms (and specifically American freedoms) on their fantasy medieval settings. The guard comes and arrests the main character and the main character insists he cannot be arrested unless the guard tells them what he's being arrested for. Oh no, my friends, they absolutely could come and arrest you and not tell you what you were being arrested for. That's why we have an amendment that says you can't do that. Because you could do that. But now you can't.

I think the one that gets me the most is when a main character or a friend screams, "We have a right to [x]!" Son, you don't have a right to shit. You only get the rights the king provides to you and those can and will be changed when the king feels like it because he is appointed by god and/or is god and thus his will is not only a matter of rule but a matter of mandate from heaven, so you should really stop complaining that you can only hunt squirrels now.

Such mistakes are most frequently made by American writers. We're so accustomed to our freedoms being the "right" freedoms that it can be a shock when you find out that modern countries don't necessarily share such rights. (And I'm not talking about communist China, I'm talking about the United Kingdom not having the same provisions of free speech as the US. The right to free speech that we enjoy isn't enjoyed by every G-8 country in the West.)

So read over the bill of rights. Hell, read over all 27 amendments. You may not have to worry about limiting your president to two terms or prohibition, but read them for the signs they are. Until those signs were written, people did them. Soldiers lived in your home whether you wanted them to or not. Your punishment was cruel and unusual (or at least cruel, given its frequency I would assume it became usual). You don't have a right not to incriminate yourself or worship what religion you wish or assembly or a free press.

You only have the right to the law that is dictated by a single man and can be changed just as quickly (unless you've created some kind of parliamentary legal body in which case it comes from a collection of men and can be even harder to change).

Oh, and do not lick the C-4.

A Paragraph

If you read industry blogs at all, you have seen an agent or two (or two hundred) occasionally talk about reaction emails. Reaction emails are when an amateur (not an aspiring author) shows that he or she is no way emotionally ready for the challenges of publishing and may never be. They submit their query and receive a form rejection.

See now right there, that's pretty awesome. More and more agents are just not responding if they don't want to see more and I think that's lame because accidents happen and who knows if they ever received it or not (*beats the dead horse a little more*). Regardless, when you get the form rejection, that's pretty awesome. They saw your query and decided to pass. Closure.

But then these jerk offs write back and tell the agent how he/she cannot possibly conceive of the genius they have just rejected. That X number of other agents have already offered representation (which is a load of crap because no one goes from querying to partial to full in that little amount of time). And how could an agent ever think to judge one's genius by the five sample pages requested as part of the query!?!

See, I don't like that last part. I don't like any of it. When you get a rejection that's the end of it until you have something new to query. Don't be a dick. But if you think a professional in the industry needs more than five pages to gauge the quality of your work, then you're not a professional in the industry. Be thankful they gave you five pages. They probably knew the answer in the first paragraph. If you're particularly shitty at this whole thing, they knew in your first sentence.

And if you're not shitty at this whole thing, then you should be able to do the same. Critical reading is a fundamental skill and one necessary to improve your writing. When you read, you should find every crack in the paint, every loose nail in the floorboard, every over-watered cement mix in the foundation. You need to know when someone's repeating the same descriptors, using conflicting cadence, and/or showing and not telling. You need to know all these because you need to do it to yourself before you let other people read your work. You want your writing to be the best it can be so they don't waste their time finding the things you should have found but finding other things you hadn't thought of. (To which you will commit those mistakes to memory and find them on your first past the next go around, thus continuously improving until you're so awesome you cause the universe to implode from the sheer mass of your awesomeness.)

For the time being, pay someone you love (spouse, sibling, best friend). It won't cost much. Five bucks and a pizza or something. At any time they overhear you complaining that someone would love your work if they'd just read the whole thing, you have that person slap you across the face. Then say thank you, because that person is on duty, always vigilant, to bring you back to your senses. You make sure that you build the most amazing house of a novel in those sample pages, not a McMansion that would lend itself to hijinx with Tom Hanks and Goldie Hawn.

And if you think what I'm saying is harsh, keep in mind two things. First, it's late and I'm not feeling well, so my personal filter is working at half-capacity. Second, you already do this. When you read a book and that first page is utter shit. So then you go to the next page and it's even worse. It's a rare thing to keep reading a book in hopes that you'll love it only if you read to the very end. You put your much valued time toward endeavors that are worth it. You can tell by the page. You can tell by the paragraph. Perhaps even by the sentence. And so can they.

Remember that the next time you're in the mood to bitch. (Not to mention there are so many other things to bitch about! Like agents that don't even send form rejections! Or that the Canucks won game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Bruins with an off-sides goal! Priorities, people!)

Words and Games

The topic of custom words in fantasy has come up in a variety of places I visit lately (Book Country, et al.), and while I don't hold it against people who choose to have names for months other than January-December, I find it a distraction and a lot of work for very little return. So I keep it simple. Seconds are seconds. Months are months. And so on.

What I found today is that I'm not as complacent about games. I made a chess reference in my fantasy manuscript and it brought me to a screeching halt. The metaphor is perfect for the situation, but I have trouble accepting that chess as we know it would have occurred in that setting in the same capacity. But choosing a name unique to the setting erodes the metaphor. I may dump the metaphor all together and ignore the problem. It's curious, though, that I'd be okay with measurements but not games.

What I absolutely won't do is use idioms or reference fairy tales or other key phrases that were told to us in our childhood that we continue to use today (no old lady in the shoe or anything like that). As a reader, that kind of thing pulls me right out of a story, so I will not do it as a writer. It may be inconsistent, but I don't care. :)

Ooooo *shivers* Do it again!

I just had one of those moments. I love those moments. Back in the day, the reason I never finished anything was because I tried to plot things out. I might get a ways into it. I tried to get a feel for it and then write an outline, but I was convinced I couldn't go forward without an outline. What that meant is I never finished anything. 40,000 words on a manuscript and then three days working on an outline and I threw everything out.

I don't outline any more. Now I write by the seat of my pants. The pants/plots paradigm (p³) is a well established discussion on the tubes and I'm not going to tell you to do things one way or the other. Find what works for you and then do it. I will say, however, if you're not finishing anything you start, you may want to try an alternate writing method.

No, the reason the topic comes up today is because I had one of my favorite moments as a pantser. You're writing your chapter and you know where you're going and you just have to craft it to have some kind of competent literary end to the chapter. And then you get to the end of the chapter and your fingers keep typing and all of a sudden something you never considered before has appeared on the page. And not only is it good, it's awesome. The reader inside you screams, HOLY SHIT THAT'S AWESOME! Let's call that tickling the reader.

I suspect (but have no evidence and no inclination to prove my claim) that pantsing allows you to tickle the reader a little bit more because you're engaging in a higher degree of discovery along the way (I won't say you don't know where that's going because such a claim is insulting and usually only made by plotters that don't know better or bad writers who have no actual substance to their work). *deep breath* It's a matter of degree. I may not know the exact route I'm taking, but I know where I'm going and when I need to show up. Sometimes, though, you see that there's a road you thought closed that is actually open so you take it to see where it goes. And that's when your reader gets tickled.

That's a good moment. I like me the tickles.

New Things

The template for the blog has changed yet again. I liked that last one, but there were too many small things that needed fixing. Date wasn't displaying properly. The manner in which comments were listed was dumb. User pics weren't showing up like they were supposed to. I'll be the first to admit that my JavaScript isn't the strongest, but things I know should have worked weren't working, and I want to have a blog that I can customize to suit my purposes.

So I found this new thing. As good as the last? No. But better than the standard brown world thing and more readable than my original that so many people (*cough* Rich *cough*) complained about.

So we'll see if this one sticks.

Something else I did today is try out Google Documents. Oh, I've used it before, but never for anything that was important. Namely, I've never used it for my writing. So I created a brand spanking new super-secret Google account (you can't hack what you don't know is there!) and ran through some trial documents. I am unsure of whether GDocs is a suitable replacement for a word processor.

Why would I even be considering it? Because of THIS! My Eee PC is aging and the new models don't use XP as their OS any more. A netbook using Windows 7 is counterintuitive. More so when it's Windows 7 Starter (which isn't much of a starter). The Chromebook is a web-paced portal device but it allows you to work offline. This wouldn't replace my Asus laptop at home but my Asus Eee PC that I write on. That thing doesn't have anything on it other than Open Office. So not being able to install applications isn't much of a concern for me. Acer is making an 11-inch WiFi only (well, they're making a 3G version as well but I have no need for that). And with a cell phone that acts as a mobile hotspot, this may be the next logical step in my computing evolution.

The problem with Google Docs is A) the terms for which you have to agree to use it (they're standard stuff, but I don't like terms for my work), B) it indents lines using an indent formatting rather than a tab mark, and most importantly C) there is no custom dictionaries. You can add words to the dictionary, but you can never remove them. And you cannot have multiple dictionaries, which is exactly what I do for my books. What is a valid word in one novel may not be a valid word in another. So I make a new dictionary with each manuscript. I can't do that with Google Docs and that's a really big deal.

Still, the Eee PC hasn't kicked it yet. We'll revisit this proposition once it is gone and I need a new laptop.

Bravado

The scenes I have the most trouble writing are men posturing. I blame fantasy for this. It is one of the most used scenes in classic fantasy when two alpha males begin barking at each other and bumping chests. It also reads like the stereotypical nerd living in his parents' basement writing the hero he wishes he was taking revenge on the people that picked on him in school.

I don't live in anyone's basement, and none of my characters are representative of a person I wish I was (or think I am). They are their own selves. Chest thumping is what stalled THE 7TH SACRIFICE for the second time and I wrote another such scene this morning in my current wip. It's a necessary tension in the plot and will factor in later, but...

...but I don't like posturing. At all. It feels juvenile. Worse, it feels amateurish. I am the hero and I'm a badass therefore I am better than everyone. Did you smudge my pumas? I will have satisfaction, sir! Throw wine in face, punch to the stomach, draw swords, epic duel. Honor maintained.

What? Dude. Chill out. No grown adult is as quick to temper as a fantasy hero is. You don't need to browbeat everyone into supplication. If you're confident and skilled, your own regard is all that matters. Let the guy scuff your pumas. Throw an urchin a copper piece for a quick polish and be on your merry.

It's incredibly difficult to write because no matter how I approach it, I don't like that kind of thing, so I'll never think I've done good enough. I'll leave it there for now, but who knows whether it'll even survive my second draft.

Big 5-0

Elizabeth Poole has passed 50 followers on her blog, leaving us little 15 subscriber folks in the dust! In celebration of this milestone, she has called for a blog fest! Take your older writing and post it to show what kind of writers we used to be! Now I've lost a lot of my older stuff over the course of repeated moves in my immediate post-college career. You can still listen to my short story "The End of Bliss".

So with that in mind, CONGRATULATIONS LIZ!

I thought I would instead post chapter two from my first completed novel, BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE. It did not get picked up by an agent because its main character is Poseidon. He's a thief. I'm told this makes the story too much like Percy Jackson. Read the following chapter and tell me if you agree.


October 8, 2006
Cardinals 6, Padres 2

“Penultimate, man! There is no other way to describe it than penultimate!” Cy Lekkas wields a chicken drummie like a scepter, Weck-n-Wings' patented Nuclear Sauce flinging onto the table as if he were anointing it with holy water. The table matches his curly brown hair, most of his face, his St. Louis Cardinals baseball jersey, and his jeans, all of which have been sanctified by barbecue sauce at some point during the night.

The man across from him doesn't mind—or even notice. Beer has been flowing freely for hours and the night is still young. The Cardinals made short work of the Padres and are on their way to the championship series and, barring a spectacular collapse, will be the 2006 World Series champs.

“The St. Louis Cardinals are going to be the 2006 World Series champs!” Cy shouts, raising his drummie high in royal decree. The restaurant erupts in cheers. This might be considered a frustrating disruption to the dinner of non-baseball-watching patrons. Such a consideration is not feasible in St. Louis because there are no non-baseball-watching patrons, not in St. Louis, not in a place like Weck-n-Wings.

Weck-n-Wings is a chicken wing joint. The menu offers salads and shrimp, but the only people that eat those things are ex-employees and people that have no soul. For everyone else, there are wings, drummies, and sixteen different barbecue sauces from mild and sweet to Nuclear, a sauce that has earned its name. And like any good wing joint, there are copious amounts of beer. The walls are covered with big-screen LCDs offering every sport aired on TV: baseball, basketball, football, hockey, cricket, Aussie rugby (Union), and even curling. Curling is unnaturally popular. What space is left on the walls is filled with smaller screens with trivia games. The servers—all female—are the most beautiful, nubile specimens in the city and that is by design.

“If they win the series, I'm going to go to California and have a plastic surgeon implant a womb, right here,” the man says, rubbing his belly. “Then I'm going to go find Pujols, and I'm going to have his baby. I'm going to make love to him right there in the locker room, and I'm going to give him another child.”

“Sweet, sweet man love.” Cy has no idea who the man is, why the baseball star needs another child, or why that child wouldn't be conceived with his wife rather than a stranger, but he's wearing a Cardinals jersey so they are brothers.

“It's not man love if I have a womb,” he rebukes. “I'm going to give him a child. It's special.” The man looks visibly distraught at Cy's obvious lack of regard for the miracle of life.

Cy scrunches his face, pondering the miracle of life through a haze of Budweiser and the heady aroma of Nuclear Sauce—which he notices has dripped all down his forearm. He begins licking it clean as he ponders.

“But how is his semen going to get to your egg? And do eggs come with the womb or do you have to buy those separate? You'll need fallopian tubes. And a vagina. You gotta get the whole nine yards. I'm not sure if I would have a doctor cut off my dick if the Cards win the series.” His eyebrows raise, waiting for all the facts of womb transplantation to sink in. “I like my dick. I like it where it is.” He dries an arm with a napkin.

If he promised to remove his dick if they won—and obviously if they win it would be because he promised to remove his dick—would it be worth it? Which is more important, his dick or the Cardinals winning the series again. “Maybe a testicle. I've got two...”

“Nah, you got it all wrong.” The stranger nods his head authoritatively. “Those California doctors can do anything. You just have em pop off your junk for nine months, give Pujols a baby, then have em pop it back on. I don't think that's unreasonable.”

So which is more important, the uninterrupted presence of his penis or the Cards winning a series? This would take some consideration. Cy sits back at the table and dips his fingers into the tub of Nuclear Sauce then licks them clean. Sure the wings are tossed in sauce before they're served, but never enough. Not enough for Cy, anyway. And if he has to drop a few extra bucks for a mega-side of sauce, it is worth the price.

“Can I get you gentlemen anything else?” the waitress asks. She wears the Weck-n-Wings' black and gold uniform shirt surprisingly free of barbecue sauce with a name tag that says, “Welcome to Weck-n-Wings, I'm K A Y L A.” Long blonde hair, pale skin, and wonderful curves. In the sea of post-season frenzy, she is the lighthouse that reminds these men that there is a world outside of baseball.

“I'm fine. Mother, do you need anything?” Cy asks the man across the table. The guy shakes his head. “We're good, thank you.”

Kayla collects some of the trash from the table. She gives him a “Who is that?” quirked eyebrow. He gives her an “I have no idea” shrug. She gives him a “Look at your shirt!” frown. He gives her a “Who cares? It's the playoffs!” smile. She gives him a “See you tonight” wink, careful that no other patrons see her lest they get the wrong impression.

“I'll bring the check,” she says. “You can pay whenever you're ready.”

Not that he needs to worry about paying. It's theater for the masses. What Kayla cannot give him through her employee perks he wins with the Nuclear Sauce Challenge. He has won every time since the restaurant started the event, much to the dismay of the assistant store manager, Mark Preston. The same store manager that is making a bee line to his table right now.
“Manager Mark, you model of manliness, you paragon of promiscuity, how are you this glorious evening?” Cy slams his fist on the table emphatically. No one notices. They're lost in their own celebrations.

Mark tries and fails to force his expression to unphased neutrality, imitating British austerity. He appears more the butler than manager.

“Mr. Lekkas. How good to see you again. I had only seen you five times this week and I was beginning to worry,” Mark says, ignoring Cy's own salutation. Cy thinks the man should be happy to have such a loyal patron, but given how long it has been since last he paid, he understands the belligerence. “And how is your meal tonight, Mr. Lekkas?” he asks. He looks down his nose at Cy, making his long nose hairs particularly noticeable. Mark runs the multi-million dollar grossing franchise restaurant while Big Mike, the owner/store manager spends his time trying to shag the newest waitress. But his name tag still says, “Welcome to Weck-n-Wings, I'm M A R K,” eliminating any sense of authority.

“Terrific as always, Manager Mark.” Cy licks between his fingers suggestively. Mark's face contorts, as if he had uncomfortable gas. “Terrific game, terrific chicken, terrific service. All in all, I'd say it was superlative.”

“I'm pleased to hear it.”

The two men pause, Cy waiting for Mark and Mark seemingly savoring some delicious bit of knowledge that he has yet to reveal. Cy dips a drummie in his extra sauce, then puts the whole thing into his mouth, pulling it in and out as he sucks it clean. Mark wrinkles his nose and begins to shift his weight from foot to foot.

“I have some news that I believe you'll find relevant, Mr. Lekkas,” Mark says.

“Yes, Manager Mark?” Cy says, extracting the bone and swallowing the chicken in one large, audible gulp.

“Please, it's just Mark. Or Mr. Preston.”

“And important information that was. I'll keep that in mind.” Cy looks to his table-mate only to find the man gone elsewhere. They hadn't actually eaten at the same table but only fell together during the reverie of the Cardinals' victory. The need to piss or some similar demand has drawn him away, leaving Cy alone to revel in his own juvenile humor.

“What? No, that's not what I— that is—”

“Oxygen, man!” Cy shouts, grabbing another wing. “Breathe.”

“Mr. Lekkas, I have received notice from Corporate that we are amending the Nuclear Sauce Challenge. Whereas previously you—any customer was entitled to a free meal if he could eat 18 Nuclear wings, a person is now entitled to only one complimentary meal a month.”

Cy nods, mouth full of chicken. He drinks from his tub of Nuclear Sauce like it was a beverage. Mark's eyes widen and his jaw works, bobbing up and down as he tries to speak.

“Th—this amendment, sir, was effective as of Monday, so you have already received your complimentary meal for the month. I hope it is not an inconvenience to you that you were not informed then.”

“Mark?”

“Yes, Mr. Lekkas?”

“Did you really just say whereas? Whereas, Mark? Really?”

More chicken. More sauce. More jaw bobbing.

“If you are unable to pay for your meal today, sir, we can hold your bus pass or other form of identification while you visit an ATM.”

The insult is not missed. Cy can't help but smile. He's never gotten this much of a rise from Manager Mark before.

“No worries, Mark. Mrs. Poole at the corporate office sent me the notice too. My picture is in the lobby, you know, for having won the Challenge more than anyone else. Seems she's an admirer. She sent me a bunch of gift cards. More are on the way, too. I'm good.”

“She...she—”

Cy stares at the jaw. The thing must be on a hinge the way it just moves up and down like that. It's like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. He wonders if Mark has an oil can in the back office.

Mark turns and walks away without saying anything else.

Cy smiles to himself. He shouldn't derive so much pleasure from haranguing Mark, but he does. And Mark took a jab at him. The man has a stick so far up his ass that he wouldn't take a jab at Evander Holyfield if the two were in a boxing ring.

“Did you see that?” Cy asks, seemingly to no one. The din of the crowd is loud enough that no one hears him or how his voice has changed. It sounds like metal feet of an imbalanced table rocking back and forth.

“I did,” Table answers. “You're taking a risk pushing him like that.” It has no lips, no mouth, no vocal cords, but it Speaks, and Cy understands it. Understands it and Speaks its language.

A fan standing near the table looks over his shoulder. Seeing nothing but Cy sitting covered with Nuclear sauce, he turns back to his party. “This isn't just about you, you know,” Table says.

Cy takes a chicken drummie and swirls it in his extra sauce, placing the mess in his mouth. The hair on his arms stands up as energy courses through his body. He doesn't just hear Table, he hears everything that Speaks in the restaurant. While the other tables, the ceiling, and the walls are all silent, the floor has a lot to say. None of it polite. Cy smiles and purposefully drips a little sauce on the floor.

“Oh, fuck you!” Floor bellows, its voice like squeaky shoes on a wet surface. Cy laughs.

“Antagonizing Manager Mark isn't enough?” says Table. “Now you have to piss off Floor too?”

“No worries. Everything will be okay.” Cy says. If you live long enough, everything is okay eventually.

“For you maybe. But Kayla won't be so fortunate.”

“What about Kayla?” For the first time in the conversation, Table truly has Cy's attention. He grips the side of the table and leans close to it, as if proximity might speed its response.

“Manager Mark was sitting at me yesterday after close. He was saying things. Saying things about Kayla.”

“What things?”

“Never a good sign, my man.” Cy's brother-in-Cardinal-Nation returns, falling back into his chair, knocking over the tub of extra sauce. He gives Cy a critical look, his eyes widening and narrowing as he tries to focus. “You gotta keep your head up or the waitress is gonna cut you off.”

“I'm not drunk,” Cy says irritably, sitting upright.

“No, of course not.” The man gives him a knowing wink. “Me either.”

Cy hears Floor sniggering at him.

“Shut up,” Cy says, sotto voce.

“Gazundtite,” the man says.