B3 Turns 50 (Pages That Is)

I'm back at work on This World We Live In, aka B3, and I just finished and printed out page 50. I'll do ten more pages tomorrow, taking advantage of the cushion of a few extra pages this week, because I was able to salvage the first five pages or so from my original effort in December.

The biggest challenge so far is the willingness to work. Once I get started I'm fine, but when I have errands to run beforehand or any kind of distraction, I have to push to get going. In the immortal words of Lou Grant (or whichever scriptwriter wrote the immortal words), "That's why they call it work."

One thing I'm totally ignoring is chapters. When I wrote Life As We Knew It, I didn't include chapter breaks. They were entirely Harcourt's idea. I think I did the same for the dead and the gone, only since I knew Harcourt would want chapters, I put them in before sending the manuscript off. So the first 50 pages of B3 are one giant gloomp, although I know for sure that there'll be the start of a new chapter at Miranda's May 13 entry (I'm writing May 12 now).

It turns out sequels are tricky suckers. If someone picks up B3 without having read LAWKI or d&g (could be my new editor, whoever that may end up being, although my guess is said editor will read the first two books before grabbing the infamous red pencil), they have to understand what's happened beforehand. But I discovered yesterday the risk of repeating material.

In LAWKI, Miranda and Mom have some really big fights. I decided to put one in B3 at a moment when Mom feels particularly vulnerable, since Matt and Jon are gone for a few days, catching shad in the Delaware River (Miranda doesn't go with them because I know nothing about fishing and there are limits to what I'm willing to learn for my fiction). But as I was writing the fight scene, I realized I couldn't just repeat the fights they'd had in LAWKI, even though when mothers and daughters fight in real life, a lot of times they cover their customary turf. It wasn't so much the setting off point, since explosions can start with different fuses. It's the screaming back and forth that has to be different, yet still believable for those characters, given that most of the people who read B3 will have read LAWKI first.

Or take the scene which I was working on before I reached page 51 and called it a day. Mom just made the very interesting (to me at least) point that perhaps all the loss they'd endured before had been preparatory for all the loss they've suffered in the past year.

Now Miranda can't think of pre-LAWKI loss without remembering her friend Becky, who dies before LAWKI begins. She just can't. So even though B3 is moving along without any references to Sammi or Megan or Dan or Mom's boyfriend Peter, I had to have Miranda think of Becky. It would be untrue to her character if she didn't.

It's a tricky balance. Later on in that scene, I threw in a real fast reference (and not really a necessary one) to Henry, the guy Matt worked in the post office with. I needed a name more than anything else, and I'd already referred to a couple of people from Miranda's school, so I didn't want to use another one of them. I could have gone with something like Joe, who worked at the deli, but that got me thinking if Miranda would even know the name of someone who worked at a deli. She mentions fast food chains in LAWKI, but not neighborhood stores. So I used Henry instead, although it could be confusing to first time readers, who might wonder why or when Matt worked at the post office.

Speaking of Matt, tomorrow he and Jon should be returning from their sojourn at the Delaware, shad and Matt's extremely unexpected bride Syl in hand. Or on bike. I have a line I came up with in Missouri that I've been looking forward to putting in B3 for months now: It was like the whole world came to an end just so you could really notice her cheekbones.

Then I'll take the weekend and most likely Monday off. I'm having lunch with my mother on Monday, and that means buying groceries for her and running some errands of my own on my way to her home. And I have no illusions that I'll get home mid afternoon all fired up for a good day's work. But I figure if I average 50 pages a week, then 8 weeks would mean 400 pages, and I certainly don't plan for B3 to be 400 pages long. Syl's cheekbones aren't going to be that worth noticing. But I'm excited about adding a new character to the mix, so I'll be ready, even eager, to resume work on Tuesday (or so I tell myself on Thursday).

New Year's Update

I've been trying to work out the start of B3, putting in something reasonably big, to give the readers incentive to move forward.

I realized that although Life As We Knew It starts a little bit leisurely, by page 20 the world has come to an end. In the dead and the gone, the world is over by page 3 or 4.

But in B3, all those dramatics are done with. And while I'm confident I've thought of enough interesting action as the story progresses, I still wanted something fairly early on.

I called my friend Christy to discuss this with her, but it took her a while to figure out which B3 plot this was. I guess there've been enough to confuse anyone.

Finally I straightened her out, and we talked about the rain that I have the book starting with. First Christy thought the rain could allow things to grow, but I reminded her of those pesky volcanoes. She then suggested that the rain uncover something. She thought this might be a good thing. Christy likes happy stuff.

I like happy stuff also, but not necessarily when the entire world is in a state of collapse. But I did like the idea of the rain uncovering things.

So I came up with a scene where Miranda is out walking (easier to do now that the rain has washed away so much of the snow). She's doing a house search, looking for things that her family can use. She finds, tucked away, a box of rice pilaf (that's in tribute to people who feel I should have put more rice into LAWKI, and besides, those rice pilaf boxes are really small and could be easily overlooked). Excited by her triumph, she continues walking, and ends up at some kind of field where she sees a mound, previously covered by snow. Only it's a mound of dead people.

Whoo hoo. Nothing like a pile of corpses to make me happy. Miranda realizes that once the ground froze, bodies weren't buried; they were just piled up. She sees people she knows on the pile (I'm thinking maybe her nice high school principal, or possibly someone from her high school class- no one that needs a lot of introduction, since I'm trying to keep B3 as independent from LAWKI/d&g as possible).

I'm not sure if she sees Mrs. Nesbitt towards the bottom of the pile. I've been thinking that Miranda is haunted (not in a literal sense) by Mrs. Nesbitt, or more to the point, by thinking about how while Mrs. Nesbitt's dead body was lying on her bed, Miranda searched through her house for food. Now that Miranda isn't worrying about starving quite so much, the niceties of life are getting to her.

I also pictured a scene where Matt and Alex are playing chess, and we discover that they don't like each other. Matt could even warn Miranda not to get involved with Alex, that he wouldn't be good for her. This could increase Alex's importance to the story, which I like. There's an off chance that Alex will accompany Miranda and her family as they begin their journey westward (say to Pittsburgh, since Alex is planning to go to Ohio), but I can't see Alex leaving Julie at the convent and then returning to Miranda's home and lingering there, so that may not work. But I have weeks before I'll need to decide that.

Anyway, that's where things are right now. I'm feeling more comfortable about getting back to work on Monday. There's nothing like mounds of dead bodies to get my juices flowing!

Miranda's First Diary Entry in This World We Live In

April 26

I’m shivering, and I can’t tell because something strange is going on or because of the dream I just had or just because I’m in the kitchen, away from the warmth of the woodstove. It’s 11:15 PM, the electricity is on, and I’m writing in my diary for the first time in weeks.

I dreamed about baby Rachel. I dream about her a lot, the half sister I’ve never met. Not that I even know if Lisa had a girl or a boy. We haven’t heard from Dad and Lisa since they stopped here on their way west, except for a couple of letters. Which is more than I got from anyone else who’s left.

Rachel was about five in my dream, but she changes age a lot when I’m sleeping, so that wasn’t disturbing. She was snuggled in bed and I was reading her a bedtime story. I remember thinking how lucky she was to have a real bedroom and not have to sleep in the sunroom with Mom and Matt and Jon, the way we have for months now.

Then in the dream the lights went out. Rachel wanted to know why.

“It’s because of the moon,” I said.

She giggled. A real little girl giggle. “Why would the moon make the lights go out?” she asked.

So I told her. I told her everything. I explained how in May an asteroid hit the moon and knocked it a little closer to earth, and how everything changed as a result. There were floods that washed away whole cities, and earthquakes that destroyed the highways, and volcanoes that threw ash into the sky, blocking out sunlight, causing famine and epidemics. All because the moon’s gravitational pull was just a little stronger than before.

“What’s sunlight?” she asked.

That was when the dream turned into a nightmare. I wanted to describe sunlight, only I couldn’t remember what it was like, or what the sky looked like before the ash blocked everything. I couldn’t remember blue sky or green grass or yellow dandelions. I remembered the words- green, yellow, blue- but you could have put a color chart in front of me, and I would have said red for blue and purple for yellow.

It’s been less than a year since everything changed, less than a year since hunger and darkness and death have become so commonplace, but I couldn’t remember what life, life the way I used to know it, had been like.

But there was baby Rachel, or little girl Rachel, in her little girl’s room, asking me about how things were, and I looked at her and she wasn’t baby Rachel anymore. She was me. Not me at five. Me the way I was a year ago, and I thought, that can’t be. I’m here, on the bed, telling my half sister a bedtime story. And I got up (I think this was all the same dream, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was two dreams and I’ve just combined them), and I walked past a mirror. So I looked to make sure I was really me, but I looked just like Mrs. Nesbitt had when I found her lying dead in her bed last fall. Only upright. But old and dead.

It probably was two dreams, since I don’t remember baby Rachel after the part where I got up. Not that it matters. Nothing matters really. What difference does it make if I can’t picture blue sky anymore. I’ll never see it again, or yellow dandelions or green grass. No one will. It’s not just me, or Pennsylvania or even the United States. It’s everywhere on earth. None of us, the ones of us who are still lucky enough to be alive, will ever feel sunlight again. The moon’s seen to that.

But horrible as the dream was, that wasn’t what woke me. It was a sound.

At first I couldn’t quite place it. I knew it was a sound I used to hear, but it sounded alien. Not scary, just different.

And then I figured out what the sound was. It was rain. Rain hitting the roof of the sunroom, hitting the skylights.

The temperature’s been warming lately, I guess because it’s spring. But I couldn’t believe it was rain, real rain, and not sleet. I tiptoed out of the sunroom and walked to the front door. All our windows are covered with plywood, except for one in the sunroom, but it’s nighttime and too dark to see anything anyway, unless you open the door.

It really is rain.

I don’t know what it means that it’s raining. There was a drought last summer and fall. We had a huge snowstorm in December and then another one later on, but it’s been too cold and dry for rain.

I probably should have woken everyone up. It may never rain again. But I have so few chances to be alone. The sunroom is the only place in the house with heat, thanks to the firewood Matt and Jon spent chopping all summer and fall. We’re in there together day and night.

I know I should be grateful that we have a warm place to live. I have a lot to be grateful for. We’ve been getting weekly food deliveries for a month now, and Mom’s been letting us eat two meals a day. I’m still hungry, but nothing like I used to be. Matt’s been getting stronger and I even think Jon’s grown a little bit. Mom’s gotten back to being Mom. She makes us tidy our mattresses every morning, and at least pretend to do some schoolwork. She listens to the radio every evening, so we have some sense of what’s happening other places. Places I’ll never get to see.

I haven’t written in my diary in a month. I used to write all the time. I stopped because I felt like things were as good as they were ever going to get, that nothing was going to change again.

Only now it’s raining.

Something’s changed.

And I’m writing again.

First B3 Report

I wrote 24 pages (two days worth of work; I want to write 12 pages a day, although I have to admit Wednesday, when I began, the 12 pages took longer than I'd thought they would), and then I realized that I needed to get the action going in the story faster. I can get lost in the beginnings of my books, establishing background and characters, but that doesn't mean readers want me to take my time. As one of my editors taught me a long time ago: Start the story as close to the center of the action as possible.

This is good advice, but particularly tricky for B3. On the one paw, it's a sequel to LAWKI. On another paw, it's a follow up to the dead and the gone. But on a third paw, it's a book some people who've read one but not both of those books might read. And on the fourth and final paw, it's a book some people who've never read either book, or who read and forgotten them, might read. I guess that's four and a half paws, which could give you pause.

Did you know that Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand? I saw A Man For All Seasons in NYC yesterday and Sir Thomas More never mentioned that once.

Back to B3. Having written 24 pages, I've cut 4, to get the action moving faster. Then yesterday, while waiting for the play to begin, I realized that I'd made a plot mistake. I have Matt not walking to town because he's still too weak from the flu, but I plan for Matt to walk to the Delaware River to go fishing for shad (Todd Strasser pointed out to me that shad run in the Delaware. Todd loves to fish. I thought shad looked like minnows, but I researched them and they look like full grown fish). I also decided, so that the action could move along faster, that Matt would meet and marry Syl while he and Jon are there fishing for shad. I figure there are a number of people there, all of whom presumably learned from Todd that shad run in the Delaware in the springtime.

I had Miranda and Jon walk to town so they could talk about all the deserted houses and how they should go through them to see what they could find. Originally Matt was going to find Syl in one of those deserted houses, but now that he's going to meet her at the Delaware, maybe I should dump all that stuff, which would certainly move the action along that much faster. Heh.

Possible New Character

Between the bat incident and Dad and Lisa showing up, Matt returns to the house bringing a teenage girl (roughly Miranda's age) with him. He introduces her as Syl and explains that they met a week or so earlier in a house he thought was deserted. They've seen each other every day since and this afternoon they exchanged vows, so as far as he's considered, Syl is his wife.

Syl is very very thin (but looks like a model somehow) and has clearly been around. She's not from Howell, but has been dumped there by a guy who traveled with her and then left her there.
Miranda feels betrayed that Matt never confided in her and that he's brought back a girl roughly her own age, who he claims to love. Syl is filthy and Miranda is given the job of bringing in snow (or rain barrel water) for Syl's bathwater. But it's Matt who stays with Syl while she bathes, and it's clear from Matt's actions that he truly regards Syl as his wife. They move into the living room, even though it's the room furthest from the woodstove, and therefore coldest. Presumably Mom and Miranda in the kitchen, and now Jon alone in the dining room, have to give up one of their electric heaters each, which makes their rooms colder.

Possible things that happen with Syl: Syl is the cause of Horton's death. They've all but run out of cat food, and Syl decides Horton would be happier free, so she lets him out of the house. Miranda and Jon search for Horton and find his dead body in the woods.

Syl gets pregnant. This would be announced after Dad and Lisa arrive. Now food has to be shared even more disproportionately.

When Jon blurts out about the safe town papers, Matt (or maybe Syl) suggest that since Julie will be safe at the convent, Syl could go with Miranda and Jon, at least until the baby is born or if she isn't pregnant, until Matt can find a decent place for both of them to live. This adds even more tension to the exploding papers scene, and maybe Matt and Alex come to blows (with Miranda so confused about who she's angrier with, she can't even take sides).

When the tornado hits, Miranda is outside and sees it coming. She has a choice between going to Mrs. Nesbitt's and warning Dad and his family (which include Charlie, Alex and Julie) or going back home and warning Mom and her family (Matt, Jon and now Syl). For a moment, Miranda is paralyzed, then runs to Mrs. Nesbitt's. Possibly Syl dies in the tornado.

If Syl dies in the tornado, then the exploding paper scene has to take place before then. Unless Matt, still grieving, learns about the papers, and becomes enraged that Alex never offered them while Syl was there, since she could have been sent in lieu of either Julie or Miranda. Either way, he and Alex can get into the fight.

If Syl doesn't die, then she too is a suspect when Charlie dies. And she goes with the family at the end of the book. But I think it's stronger if she's dead by then, and we get to see Matt's devastation at her loss (and we don't water down the power of Lisa's heartless statement about how Charlie had to be stopped, by having another seemingly heartless character potentially involved).

The strongest argument against Syl dying is you don't want this to become a Bonanza style family- marry Hoss or Little Joe and inevitably end up dead. Since Charlie, an outsider dies, it might not be good for Syl, the other outsider, to be the only other character who dies. Maybe Syl doesn't die, but wanders off, having gotten what she needs from Matt and his family, while causing them great pain and division. Matt would be just as distraught and angry, especially if he senses relief on the part of Mom and maybe the others (certainly Miranda). In which case, Syl wouldn't be pregnant, but would leave after the tornado (when things are at their worst, since Dad's crew has moved back into the house). Maybe Matt tries to find her and is gone a couple of days, which increases Mom's anxiety about letting Miranda go with Dad, Julie and Alex on the trip to the convent. Maybe Matt finds Syl but she won't come back with him or let him travel with her, which would leave Matt resenting his family situation even more.

A couple of other possibilities- Jon blurts out about the safe town papers after he finds Horton's dead body- "I'm glad we're leaving you behind when we go to the safe town!"- something like that.

Another thought- bringing in Syl may eliminate the need for the whole bat incident.

Matt finds Syl after she runs away and brings her back to the family, where she stays and goes with them at the end.

Miranda to Julie, "How would you feel if your brother suddenly brought home a girl and said she was his wife."

Julie, "I don't know. Relieved?"

Julie about Alex, "He's done everything he's had to do, but nothing that he's wanted to do."

When Alex leaves Miranda and Dad, Miranda is a little surprised that he doesn't give her the safe home papers. In spite of everything, he's holding onto them in case Julie ever needs them.