Afterword for "Cold and Heavy" and STORY WEEK

**Stories for story week: "I Love My Wife" and "Cold and Heavy". Go to sidebar and click on the posts for these stories.**

I must say, boys and girls...

Story week was loads and loads of fun!

It was sort of a "Think out Loud" experience for me. I was trying to understand some of the minor characters from my epic out-of-control Sweet Heat manuscript. I can go back now and dig into my manuscript and tweak the Sylvia character nicely. Interestingly, because of all this, three huge chapters of my manuscript are going to be cut, because they will fit nicely into a Sylvia and Fred manuscript.

I felt bad about that, but my writing instructor seems to make it a point to continuously screech "Ladylee, cut and tighten. Tighten, LadyLee! Just be ruthless and tighten!"

*LadyLee furiously scribbling the word of the year into her notebook... "TIGHTEN!! RUTHLESS!! T-I-G-H-T-E-N!!*

Now, I usually send my stories out over the email thread to various people who can give me some pretty good insight or directions to go with the story. This is especially helpful when I am stuck. One word from a person will make me go "Oh! That's it!".

But one member of my elite critique team has a crazy sense of humor, and that is my blog sista, The Ladybug Mocha, who is retired from the blogosphere.

Let's just say that I messed around and asked her to think of a name of the story "Cold and Heavy". (She and LadyTee thought that was po.r.no.graph.ic.) When I hit "send" to send the email, I was like "uh-oh" because I knew she was going to run with it.

She came up with some HILARIOUS suggestions:

"Trigger Finger"
"While You Were Sleeping"
"Before You Turn Off the Light"
"Lights Out"
"Abra Cadaver"
"Where Sleeping Dogs Lie"

We were giggling (especially Serenity 23) over the email thread about other Ladybug titles:

"Mama Said Take You Out"
"Eggs Over Easy Does It"
"Wake up Dead"
"Ring the Alarm"
"Who Shot Ya?"
"Guess Who's Not Making It for Breakfast"
"Calgon Betta Take Me Away B4 I Take You Out"

And my favorite?

"One Shot: The Sylvia Ellison Story"

Now that title is HOT right there!! That's some ol' Lifetime Television for Women ish right there!!!!

This particular story got some interesting emotional responses from folks, most notably, that wanna-be Oldgirl, Serenity23, who usually reads my early drafts first. She had a huge problem with Sylvia leaving her son. I could imagine that S23 would get upset about this because she wouldn't think of leaving her son Tyler...

But S23? Calm your ass down...

It. was. a. dream.

RETRACT your CLAWS, ya chicken (inside joke).

And part of the reason Sylvia woke up crying, I believe. Now THAT'S a thought.

Don't fret, S23. Like I said over email, I had a problem with Sylvia ironing Fred's slacks... before he leaves for the night. Me, I ain't ironing a dayum thing. Betta be careful that you don't catch an iron upside the head...

Let me chill, because I'm getting pissed.

Back to what I was talking about.

"Cold and Heavy" was an interesting story. I tried to do some crazy stuff like mix flashback with a dream sequence. I am sure that there is some doggone writing craft law against such a thang, but I don't care. I got what I wanted out of it: some insight into both Sylvia and Fred's mindsets.
Part of this story, about the gun being wrapped in the pretty pink box, arose from a post I did last year about a birthday present that my Auntie Joyce received from Uncle Sean. We were sitting around the living room table and Auntie was all excited about Sean had bought. She pulled a black case out of a frilly pink gift bag lined lovingly with frilly pink tissue papers. She's an artist, so I thought it was some new paints or something. Turns out it was a gun, a .38 to be specific. I was horrified. My brother, who was 12 at the time I believe, jumped with glee, screaming "Auntie, it's a BB gun! It's a BB gun!". My sweet innocent Grandma leaned forward and whispered that she wanted to hold it. We passed the gun around. And I remember thinking, when I held it and pointed it...

"This sure is cold and heavy."

So that's where that little part of the story came from.

Now for heavier issues... Questions on my mind about the story, when looking at the Biscuit Blues Collective (funny how I keep naming this group of stories, LOL).

1. Why the heck is Sylvia fantasizing and dreaming about the bus driver Lester Johnson? What the hell is up with THAT?

2. Fred is not a violent man. He likes to sleep around a lot, though. In "Buttermilk Biscuit Blues", Fred came home from the club pushing up on Sylvia because she didn't have his breakfast ready. This was odd, because he has never laid a hand on her. That could only mean that something crazy happened at that club that night to upset him. What happened?

3. In "Buttermilk Biscuit Blues", Sylvia snapped and bust Fred upside the head with a rolling pin, knocking him unconscious. She left Fred lying on the kitchen floor, then she went to Sunday Morning church service. At the end of the story, she throws her busted rolling pin away, but decides to take it out of the trash. In a excerpt from Sweet Heat, Fred mentioned, in reminiscing about the situation, that Sylvia hemmed him up in the bathroom after he got out of the shower.

The usually quiet and reserved Sylvia had a lot to say to old Fred up in that bathroom. She had a lot on her mind. Scared the hell out of Fred, that's for sure.

Just what did Sylvia say to scare the man so bad?

Hmmmm....

These are questions on my mind.

Then one of my faaavoorite bloggers, my Online pastor Chosen (if you need your spiritual vitamin for the day, HURRY TO HER SITE), made an interesting comment in the comments section of that story:

What is the kid's point of view here?

Humph. Goodness gracious Chosen, you have just been snatched into the Original Oldgirl Elite Critique Team. You can't get out of it. It's like some old gang ish, or some old 1970's pimp and his women thang in the clubs... You've just been "chosen".

*LadyLee rolling on the floor laughing hard at THAT one*

I've been thinking about the son's point of view of things, but Chosen made a comment that brought that story together for me. She said a few things that caused me to say "OH!!"

So there are three more stories that will come out of this, all of which I will post.

I may just haphazardly just throw those out there, or I may have another story week sometime this summer. Who knows?

You never know with me!

So, boys and girls, that is the end of Story Week!

Hope you enjoyed it!!

Have a great holiday weekend!!

~LL~