Weekend Writing Warriors – 2/10/13

Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, where we post eight sentences from one of our works. I’m picking up exactly where I left off last week with meta fiction romance, NOT ANOTHER DARCY. This was my NaNo project for this past November, and the heroine has to deal with literary characters that come to life at her independent bookstore. Last week was the opening eight sentences and Mr. Darcy from the latter half of Pride & Prejudice showed up. She wasn’t very pleased to see another one.

This is still a rough draft. But here’s the next eight sentences:

But as a Handler in the Literary Reclamation League, it was her duty to take whomever popped into existence, train them, give them new identities and find work for them. The Darcys, she usually shipped off to Jane Austen sites in England as tour guides.

She faced her newest challenge, who gazed around her bookstore with a look of confusion, the poor guy. Thank god her employee Chris wasn’t due to work until noon. “Hang on there one sec, Mr. Darcy, and I’ll be right with you.”

She hustled to the front door of her bookstore and flipped the sign to “Closed,” and threw the bolt lock. From a pocket near the door, she pulled out and hung her pre-made sign for such emergencies: “Closed for twenty minutes. Grabbing coffee.”

To join in the fun and see the other wonderful writers, go to Weekend Writing Warriors! Thanks for stopping by! I’m going to try and be better today with visiting–I had out of town guests for Mardi Gras. It’s the final week, so today’s also a big day, but hopefully I’ll make the rounds this morning before the first parade rolls.

27 Replies to “Weekend Writing Warriors – 2/10/13”

  1. What a marvelous premise! As a fan of your work (and a lover of metafiction) I’d definitely check this out. What I love most here is the very ordinariness; a fictional character walks into one’s bookstore and of course must be appropriately greeted.

    I’m immediately reminded of two classic metafictional riffs (though more on the ‘inspiration’ side of the equation): Amy Lowell’s long poem ‘Sword Blades and Poppy Seed’ (here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sword-blades-and-poppy-seed/) and Joanna Russ’s story on the same theme (whose title frustratingly evades me!) While these works deal more with the creative side and the sharing of themes between writers, the fact you find yourself in such illustrious company says much about the degree to which you’ve intrigued me in a mere eight lines.

  2. Yes, I really like how she’s taking the whole thing as just a routine interruption in her day – she’s got the plan, she’s got the sign, she thinks she can handle the situation. Somehow I suspect he isn’t like all the other Mister Darcys. 😉

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