The rest of the gulp.

Chapter 1: Of Dangerous Bifocals  Part 2
   Hunger was the only force that could pull Maleya out of her area when she didn't want to. She pressed her thumbprint into the handle of the fridge before opening it. When she did, blue light shone on her favorite foods. Maleya pulled out feta cheese curds. She turned and leaned against the counter. To her right the counter ran in a U shape, curving around in front of her again six feet away. Across this counter from her, tan-ish hair bobbed and twisted, disappearing momentarily sometimes before coming back into view. Maleya smiled and threw a cheese curd at it. The tan-ishness ducked behind the counter and Barley tossed her a thumbs-up before nimbly retrieving the fallen cheese curd.

            "Leya."

            "Mmm."

            "You have writers 'spert stuff in a while."

            "Mm-hmm. S'why I'm eating." Another cheese curd. She savored the spices and the crumbling tangy cheese against the roof of her mouth.

            "Kay. Leya, think I'll ever be an expert?" It was a ridiculous question, which may have been why Barley loved asking it so often.

            "You're not practiced in the art of failing, so my suppositions are that yes, one day you too will be a spert." Half of a face appeared above the counter, cut abruptly off at the bridge of a nose. Tan hair and blue eyes stared at deep brown hair and green eyes.

            "Good." Barley's eyes thanked Maleya seriously. "In what?"

            "What do you love?"

            "Knowing."

            "Barley!"

            The eyes widened. "Why not? Other people have made up new expertesses before."

            "Areas of expertise, Barley."

            "Expertesses. It's a new word."

            "Um...Barley? Words are not invented." Maleya looked serious. Barley rolled his eyes and propped his chin on the counter.

            "D'they really? You're such a parrot, Maleya. You say everything you hear in your writer's class thingy because you're so scared to be different, a cross-over, to be a writer-techy, because people don't like that. So what? What can anyone do to you?"

            "Lot's of things."

            "Leya, seriously."

            "People could take away everything I've been working on. Everything. You don't know what that means."

            "Ok, ok. But whadda you really think about words. Aren't they invented? Do they always gotta come from the right people?"

            Barley, you know too much. You figure out so much more than anyone else would. It's because you always have to know! Maleya didn't voice her exasperation. It was better to just answer Barley's question. "Ok, fine. I don't think words grow. But I don't think they're invented either," she cast a superior glance at Barley, "they are discovered. They wait, hovering on the fringe of consciousness, dancing out of reach of our thoughts when we reach for them, and then slipping in when we need them and forget to look for them. It's perfection."

            "That's why you're a writer," Barley stated. They stared at each other for a few minutes.

            "I want a drink," Maleya intoned, pushing her off the counter. A cupboard opened and the tap started running.

            "That's why you're a techy." Barley stood up all the way and leaned against the counter, watching Maleya drink her water.

            "Barley, you have no idea."

            "But I will." Barley grinned and held a slender black wire, barely visible even in the brightness of the kitchen.

            "Is that a microphone?"

            "Mm-hmm. I've got a bunch. Dad brought 'em home," Barley championed grinning. Maleya sighed. Her father was the only real techy, and it was dangerous for him to be bringing supplies home to his family. It was hard to say exactly why, though. All areas of expertise just kept to themselves, without sharing what they had or what they knew with other areas, unless there was a finished product that would benefit everybody. Maleya's dad had always been bringing things home because his literal area was in the house, where he preferred to work on things. Naturally Maleya and Barley had grown up with more than their share of tech knowledge.

            Knowing some things about tech wasn't so much a problem, because everyone was allowed to have some tech. But not too much. The Hominy's had too much. Even that wasn't such a problem, except that they used it, instead of just knowing. Of course using the knowledge made them more proficient in it, and soon Maleya's dad had begun telling the children not to flaunt their tech knowledge. They obeyed. But Maleya still used it.

            And then had come her idea to use it in conjunction with writing. There she had crossed a line. Nobody knew about it yet, not even Barley, to whom Maleya told everything. It was too dangerous. It was mixing two areas of expertise. It would change the way things were. It would blur lines and confuse both techies and writers. It was a fascinating secret, and Maleya was confident that it was worth the time she spent on it, and worth the difficulty and the isolation of hiding it, but it was getting more difficult.

            "Leya."

            "What?!" Maleya scowled, confused by her thoughts.

            "You really should go. The writers' expert meeting is in a few minutes." Barley only used full words when he was serious.

            "I know." Maleya tried to ignore what she was thinking and went to her room – her area – to gather her manuscript and pert-paper for notes. Confounded technology.

             
{Hey - same rule here as before. Comment. And thank you kindly for reading, friend.}

*Deep breath* You choose the title!

...is something I love to do. I had to write a paragraph using setting to insinuate mood. And not just any setting or mood...I had to choose from a list of settings and mood.

Settings: City in the Rain; Midnight on the Farm; 1890, in the Parlor; High Noon on the River; A Spring Morning; In the Bar, After Hours; The Dusty Road; Dawn in a Foreign Place.

Mood: sinister, sick with love, full of promise, suicidal, dangerous, suspense, happy-go-lucky, lonely.

Sooooo...here be the paragraph, and you see if you can determine which I chose from each list! Leave a comment with your guess before I tell you!

Droplets made music in puddles. Singing water filled damp air, thrusting out delight and receiving its delight thrust unceremoniously back, leaving ripples. There was work to do: high rises and business men with newspapers, Hyundai Sonatas honked angrily, afraid of spoiling their polish on the wet city freeway – uncheery, all. Rain’s embodiment, wearing mother-enforced galoshes and brown ringlets, mad the weary water smile by leaving vanishing footprints on the drowned sidewalks and kissing the raindrops with green eyes wide in wonder. Rain fell, surer of its task of joy, and bathed the world in sweet dancing sorrow.

Today I Did

Today I...

9.6.11 Decided to not do any more ho****rk (it is a bad word to say in my presence). At 6 p.m. unfortunately.

9.4.11 Played night games. I actually tagged the fast fellow - you know the kind who are about 9 feet tall and run..oh, maybe 47 mph faster than I do. Yeah. I caught him, legit!

9.6.11 Read my textbook outside.

9.6.11 Ate lunch while sitting on a swing with a friend. That was a blast. I dropped my pear in the gravel though. Oops.

9.5.11 Cranked the tunes on my way to dump the recycables in town. Cruising in '94 truck, wearing my work clothes, window down, singing to the radio (and passers-by) never felt so good.

9.6.11 Emailed my friend not a paragraph, but a list. Something like this. Only numbered. Fun stuff.

9.4.11 Saw a black bear. I was out walking down a road near our home (with me dog and me phone) and saw something big walking up the side of the drainage ditch. I knew it wasn't a dog because it was big and it was walking smoothly; the ditch is steep enough that dogs usually take it in leaps. It was probably 50 yards in front of me, so I turned around, called my mother, and tore off down the road at a slightly accelerated walk. Mom came to get me right away, so we turned around (with the car) and went to see if we could find it, but it had gone into the woods.

9.6.11 Ate hamburger pizza. For supper. A whole pizza. (It was little, ok? Stop looking at me like that.)

9.3.11 Went outside and ran around the house and across the lawn for no particular reason.

9.6.11 Turned around three times and slapped my legs all the way down to my ankles. Ask my choir teacher about that one.

9.3.11 Wrote a letter to a friend.

9.6.11 Listened to a modern love song in which the only line was "Sweetheart, after the dance is over, I'll take you home in my one-eyed Ford." Bahahahaha!

9.5.11 Rejoiced that autumn has come! Yayayayaya! Oh! Beautiful season! I love the cool air that caresses me when I step outside without a coat. I love the way the mist slips over the meadows and twines gently with the trees and grasses. I love the way the honking of the geese adds a layer of musical beauty to the singing colors of fall.

What did you do today?

Book order

My eternal gratitude to those 3 (three?!) faithful friends who actually took the time to vote. I'm giving you a list of the books that the first sentences were from - you are now obligated to read the books you voted for. Notice that there is no 11th book. Ah. The sad truth is that my short story didn't pass the first sentence test. (Inna, I had hoped for better things...) Sigh.

1. The Fellowship of the Ring J. R. R. Tolkien

2. The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley.

3. A Single Shard by Linda Sue park

4. Bat 6 by Virginia Euwer Wolff

5. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.

6. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

7. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

8. Crazy Love by Francis Chan with Danae Yankoski

9. The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt.

10. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

First Sentence Test.

This is an intense test. It takes lots of studying to pass it. It takes tons of practice. But it takes even more skill. It's a short test, but you'd probably sweat buckets waiting for results from the FST. It's called the First Sentence Test.

It works like this. Judges vote on whether or not they would read your book and the answer is entirely based on their opinion of the first sentence.

Don't worry though. Today you're a judge. I'm providing you with the first sentences from several different books. They'll be numbered, so all you have to do is read the sentence, find the corresponding poll (also numbered) and vote. You will need to select 11 answers to vote on each book. Take note of how you voted for each (or some) sentence(s) and leave a comment regarding why you voted that way, or what you think of the sentence. To avoid scientific variables and all that jazz, I'm not giving you the authors or the book titles.

1. "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

2. "Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn't get to live it very often."

3. "'Eh, Tree-ear! Have you hungered well today?' Crane-man called out as Tree-ear drew near the bridge."

4. "Now that it's over, we are telling."

5. "Either this will ring bells for you, or it won't."

6. "In a city called Stonetown, near a port called Stonetown Harbor, a boy named Reynie Muldoon was preparing to take an important test."

7. "My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip."

8. "What if I said, 'Stop praying'?"

9. "In his workroom at the top of the tower, Decree, the Prime Minister, was pacing up and down."

10. "Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived right where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed by alders and ladie's eardrops and traversed a little brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; itprobably  was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof."

11. "Deep in the soul of my family is a trait that lies hidden for most of the year but becomes manifest in mid-November."