Catch Me If You Can BlogFest!

I really love all these challenges and contests on blogger!

KayKay's Corner is hosting the 'Catch Me If You Can Blogfest'.  It's really simple to sign up for and it seems like it'll be a lot of fun.

Basically the idea is to get some critique back on your current WIP. So today, I'm going to be posting the first 550 words of (for lack of a better title at the moment) Vengeance.

Also one of the participants will get a $20 gift card to Amazon!  Come on, you know you want some feedback anyways!  Give it a try!

Vengeance

“It’s a bad idea,” Derek said for the third time. Each time he said it his Puerto Rican accent thickened.  “There are a lot of variables, which ups the risk.  We need to keep it simple."

               

Lucy rolled her pretty green eyes and sighed in annoyance.  “This is simple.  Look as soon as I over ride the codes and loop the video—“

                 

“I don’t speak geek,” He reminded her with a flat glare.

She turned back to her computer screen.  “You’d think after eighty seven years you’d have picked up more than just information on cars and women.”

                 

Derek leaned against the wall of the van and smirked.  “Chica, I think you just wish you had the skills I have with women.”

                  

I sat in the back of the van quietly.  They’d figure it out.  They always did.  Derek’s face twisted and contorted, his eyes shot little red lazer beams at Lucy.  I closed my eyes, willing the images to disappear.  I’d waited too long between burnings and the flame was pissed.  When I opened my eyes the images were still there.

                

 “This is efficient.”  Lucy said changing the subject. Her words jumped around my head like ping pong balls bouncing off the sides of my skulls.  I heard her, but I couldn’t quite comprehend it.  “It’ll get the job done better than a back alley grab where any witness could be lurking.  It’s a high tech age, get with the time wolf boy.”

                 

Derek huffed in annoyance but didn’t argue.  His laser eye beams narrowed and suddenly he turned towards me.  I flinched, expecting to get burned by the red lights, but they faded when he looked at me.  “You all right, Hails?”

                 

“Pretty lights can’t hurt me.”  Wait that wasn’t right.  Closing my eyes I shook my head as if that would get rid of the craziness.  After a moment I peaked with one eye. Derek’s olive features were sharp, with a square jaw and strong nose, and they weren’t moving around anymore.  A few strands of shaggy dark hair fell into his eyes. Taking that as a good sign I opened the other eye and said, “Yeah, what’s our status?”

                

 Lucy turned to her laptop. “Guards make their rounds every hour on the hour.”  She rolled her eyes.  “Think they could shake it up a little.  Not make it so easy on us.”  She scratched at her scalp underneath all the red, curly hair that was piled on top.  “The marks office is on the seventeenth floor, corner office on the west side.  Now, trying to get you into the elevators on the bottom floor is tricky, so you’re going to go in the side fire escape door and up to the first floor. Then –

“Lucy,” I said pinching the bridge of my nose.  She looked up at me questioningly, the freckles started dancing around on her nose and I suddenly had an urge to play connect the dots.  My chest grew warm.  The flame was anxious.  “Take a breath between sentences okay?”

***

So the actual word count is 507.  The next paragraph would have put me over.

I hope you enjoy, and this is just a first draft.  I've learned that if I constantly go back and edit I'll never finish it.  

Oh and my email is Sullys.scribbles@gmail.com for anyone who may want to do a longer critique!

My Nemesis The Sun....And Intimidation

So when I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is brush my teeth and hair, wash my face and sit down at my desk with a cup of coffee and check over my email, blog, etc, etc.  Coffee is optional pending on how awake I feel at the time.  Either way at the beginning of my day, I'm usually sitting here wondering... How am I going to make my brain function today?  Honestly it seems that when the suns up, my brain is asleep.  It could explain why I have such a hard time falling, and staying asleep at night.  It could also explain why I tend to write more when the moon is out.

I think the sun may be my nemesis.

Then, sitting here, reading over the new blog posts this morning, I realized something.  Having a new blog can feel very intimidating.  It isn't that the people aren't welcoming or inviting, but rather, I've realized just how well some of them can write.  Then as I go to my do my posts, I suddenly feel like a complete novice.

I don't claim to have any major knowledge of writing.  It's just something I do.  If I think about something too hard, I tend to screw it up, so trying to write an article about the intricacies of writing would just come off as one long piece of malarkey.  Honestly, I'm not a critical thinker.  I'm a person who goes off instincts.  Even with my stories, if I think too far ahead I have a tendency to get frustrated and angry because it's not going the way I want it.

Then I look through the blogs and everyone's words seem so eloquent and the advice is wonderful.  I look back at my blog and wonder what it is I have to offer besides musings and more often than not, horribly written short stories.

It's a good question.  One I'm not sure I have an answer to.  Maybe it's because my brain is still trying to wake up, or maybe the rays from the sun are blocking any coherent thoughts from forming.  I'm not sure.  All I can say for now, is that I guess it doesn't really matter to me what people think.  In the writing world, I am a novice.  This blog is to help me learn and grow as a writer.  Maybe even as a person.  It would be hard to go through the journey alone, and maybe having joined a community of other writers and want-to-be writers will help me in that process.