The Tuesday Tidbit

My debut novel (let’s say it together, kids) A Basic Renovation came out this past February. My sophomore novel For Your Eyes Only has been out for sixteen days. What do writers do when they have two books out in a year–besides promo for the books they’ve just published? Why, they write more novels! In my case, I write more smart-ass style romance.

Below is a little morsel of what I’m working on at the moment. A Former race car driver meets an Animator and they both learn to face what they fear most in life. I like to write about fear.

Olivia sneezed again.
     “God bless you!” he snarled.
Her shivering was uncontrollable now, her teeth chattered. “Could you say that like you mean it?”
     “Look…just…keep quiet, will you?”
The corners of her mouth briefly twitched. Then she sneezed four times in a row.
     “Oh for fuck’s sake! Here!” Maxwell kicked his jacket over to her.
     “All my life I’ve hoped to meet someone as unpleasant and unhappy as you. Please don’t spoil it for me by suddenly being nice.”
      I’m not…unhappy.” Maxwell was beginning to pant, his breath shallow and harsh. He knew it was ridiculous, but everything was being compacted. It wasn’t as if the walls were closing in; it was more like his entire body was being incrementally stuffed into a torpedo tube. Where the hell was his backbone? Had it siphoned out through his pores along with every ounce of moisture in his body?          “You…don’t know …me. I’m not…unhappy,” he said, trying to catch his breath.
     “I’m sorry. That’s right. You’re not unhappy. You’re just ill-mannered.”
      “Well, do you want it or not, you wet little rodent?” he choked.
     “Wet little rodent? Is that the best you could come up with?”
      “Listen, you soggy chipmunk,” he panted, “I know what you’re trying to do.”
      “Oh, I’m just on edge waiting for you to tell me what that is,” Olivia said, looking at him through narrowed eyes as she dragged his jacket over her shoulders. It smelled wonderful, like nutmeg and cardamom and autumn leaves.
     “You’re trying to…” Maxwell gulped in air, but it only seemed to go halfway into his lungs before he could continue. He yanked at his tie again and began unbuttoning his shirt. His galloping heart was on the verge of exploding beneath his ribcage, the pulse raced in his temple, in his neck, in his wrists and groin. His hoarse exasperation shot through his clenched teeth, “You’re trying to disarm me!”
     “Disarm you?”
     “Yes, you waterlogged hamster, you’re trying to get my mind off the fact I’m trapped in a god-forsaken thing with a half-drowned rabbit! It’s not going to work!”
     She said, “You were going along pretty well there with the whole rodent thing, but rabbits are not rodents. They belong to a different order, Lagomorpha, not Rodentia, and why would it be so bad if you were distracted from feeling uncomfortable?”
     “It’s not going to work, so…so…just…quit it,” he puffed.
     “Okay, so then stand there covered in flop sweat and let fear get the better of you.”
     “Shut…up…shut…up…shut up!” Maxwell couldn’t breathe. Well, he could, but it felt as if the air was being squashed back out of his chest as soon as it went in.
     “You’re going to take me down with you, aren’t you? When you pass out, and you’re going to if you keep hyperventilating, you’re going to fall on top of me.”
     “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he wheezed, bending forward at the waist to snatch his breath back as if he’d just sprinted 800 meters. Shit, he was hyperventilating.
     No, he was hyper-hyperventilating.
     This was ludicrous. He was nearly forty-eight years old and terrified of being in a very small room simply because it had no window and…his mind suddenly zeroed in on that important point.
     There was no window.
     What if the emergency light died?
     What if the storm outside made the Chicago River flood into the basement of the building like it did back in “92?
     What if the rubber-coated elevator cables, the cables suspending them in mid-air above nothingness, snapped?
     Any way he looked at it they were locked in this box…trapped in this vault…enclosed in this coffin…sealed in this tomb…