Nothing comes out.

I had taken Friday off due to family stuff…  Okay I lie.  I haven’t had a relaxing weekend for a bit.  You know what I did on Friday?  I went on a date with my husband.  We went to IKEA, where we agonized over whether or not to buy more book cases and some furniture, because we have seven Billy bookcases and stuff is still in boxes.  And then we went to a pub and grill just down the road, and he had chicken fingers and I had a gyro and a mimosa.  Verdict: mimosa taste must better after you drink about half of one.  And then we took a nap, because we have a giant new bed and we were tired from IKEA.  And also because I am a lightweight: two mimosas and I am out.  And then kids came home from school and we went to see SEASON OF THE WITCH, which was exactly what I expected and I give it a high B.  And then we came home and took Kid 1 to a sleepover.  And then we hung out.

All this meant I need to make up a day in writing.  I tried to do it yesterday, and phhhhhhhbbbbbthth.  And this morning seems to be phhhhbbbthththt as well. I’ve been stuck on the same scene for three days now.  Something is clearly wrong with it.

So here is a small snippet of Alphas for you.

Chapter 4

Karina awoke.  The room lay empty.  Bright morning light flooded through the window, drawing a yellow rectangle on the wooden floor.  A draft brought an acrid stink of burning bacon.

Emily.

She pushed free of the sheets and almost fell.  Her head swam.  Slowly, very slowly she slid off the bed and stood upright.  A full glass sat on the bedside table with a yellow sticky that read, “Drink it.”  She could practically hear Lucas’s growl.

The memory of gnawing teeth squirmed through her, dragging nausea in its wake.  Karina bent over, gripped the night table to steady herself, and saw a square bandage hiding her arm.  She tugged at it, sending a jolt of pain through her limb.   It remained stuck.  Karina pulled harder, trying to rip it away as if she could shed the memory of Lucas with it.  She struggled with it for a few seconds, pain pounding up her biceps in hot prickly bursts, and finally tore it free.

A big bruise stained the bend of her arm.  Dark purple, it sat there like a brand.  Lucas’s proof of ownership.  Dried blood caked in the center, where his teeth had mangled her veins.

The price she paid for Emily’s life.  And her own.

Karina stepped to the window, slid the latch free, and threw it open.  A wide green expanse spread before her, a grassy slope gently rolling away and down, toward the mountains, brown and rust, fading to blue and eventually grey in the distance.   A scrub forest hugged the roots of the mountains, dotting the prairie in clumps of green.  The wind fanned her face, bringing moisture and tart fragrance of some unknown flower.

It was the middle of summer in Southern Oklahoma and the prairie she’d seen through her windshield yesterday was a sea of brown dried grass.  This, this looked like spring after weeks of rains somewhere in the foothills of rugged mountains.

Where the hell was she?

West Texas?  Ozarks, perhaps?  She wasn’t sure.

The house sat on a hill – she could see for miles and miles.  No houses broke the grass.  No help.  She was trapped in the wilderness.

Karina let go off her bandage and it fluttered in the wind, floating until it fell, like a dying bird, to the trees and grass below.   She wanted to cry.  Hovering on the verge of tears, she leaned on the windowsill and tried to steady herself.

The ache in her arm pushed her to scream at the sheer mind-boggling unfairness of it: at being attacked, kidnapped, hurt, forced, held down by brute force, robbed of her daughter, stripped of her freedom.  At being plucked from her life and dumped in the middle of nowhere, with every human connection severed.  At being overpowered by something that wasn’t suppose to exist.   At being owned.  Only a day ago, she felt reasonably safe, secure in the knowledge that she could dial 911 at any moment and bring a police cruiser to her door.   She had rights.  She had protections.  She was a person.

Karina closed her eyes and breathed in the breeze.  She was still a person.  No matter how they treated her, she had to treat herself as if she was still a person, because the moment she lost her self-respect, her identity, she would give up on any chance of escape.  She couldn’t stand up to them physically.  They could do horrible things to her body and she wouldn’t be able to stop them.  But no matter how deeply they clawed, they couldn’t get at her core.

A hint of movement dragged her gaze to the plain below.  Something crashed through the underbrush, rustling the branches. Karina leaned forward, squinting. A flash of something grey and upright flickered through the gap between the trees.  People.  Her heart hammered.  She had needed something, something to signal for help.  Karina spun.  To the right a table stood against the wall, a pair of black binoculars on it.  She swiped them.  Let’s see, clothes, sheets…  Sheets.  She yanked the white top sheet off the bed and pulled it to the window.  If she could wave it like a flag, maybe they would see her.

The brush quaked.  A small brown animal burst from the growth.  It resembled a dog, or maybe a coyote.  It dashed across the grass, zigzagging in sheer panic.  It didn’t run like a coyote.

What in the world?

Karina raised binoculars to her eyes.

The creature wasn’t a dog.  If anything it looked like a tiny horse, no more than two feet tall.

The brush shivered and spat three grey shapes onto the grass, one large and two others smaller.  They stood upright on two massively muscled legs, their bodies sheathed with grey feathers speckled with spots of black. Long, powerful necks supported heads armed with enormous beaks.   The binoculars picked up every detail, from the crests of long feathers on their heads to the tiny vicious eyes.

Karina froze.

The three crests rose in unison.  Beaks gaped and the wind brought a faint echo of a harsh distant screech.  The birds sprinted after the horse.

The horse galloped for its life, veering left.

The birds picked up speed.  They passed a twisted tree and Karina drew a sharp breath.  The feathered crests nearly brushed the branches.  She might have been off by a foot or so because of the distance, but she’d seen enough of the prairie in her life to guess the height of those branches.  At least six feet.  May be more.

The bird on the left slid and swung toward the house to right itself.  A flash of pale red shot through the empty air, as if the bird had ran into an invisible net stretched tight, and the pressure of its body caused the threads to glow red.  The bird screeched and fell, catapulted back.  For a moment it lay on the grass stunned, and then it rolled back to its feet and rejoined the chase.

The small horse was getting tired.  It slowed.  Foam dripped from its mouth.

The largest bird sprinted.  The monstrous beak rose, coming down like an axe, and chopped at the horse, knocking it off its feet.  The horse rolled in the grass and staggered upright.  The three birds danced about it, jabbing and pecking.  The horse cried out and fell.  Bloody beaks rose again and again.

Karina lowered the binoculars.

She didn’t know much about zoology, but every instinct she had told her this was wrong.  This was so wrong.  It wasn’t an emu, it wasn’t an ostrich, no, this was something vicious, something ancient, something that should not exist in the twenty first century.

Suddenly she was cold, freezing from head to toe.

A triumphant screech rolled up from the plain.

Karina dropped the sheet and slammed the window shut.

“Alphas is to scary”;

“Will you be toning down the Alphas for publication, because you won’t be able to sell any books as is”;

“Please don’t tone down Alphas for publication, because you have to stay true to your artistic integrity”

and so on and so on.

I am not planning to start thinking about Alphas until 2011.  We’re up to our ears in Kate 5 and it’s like pulling teeth at the moment.  (Actually, Gordon pretty much made me leave it alone on Sunday and I ended up watching too much TV.)  Alphas are in the future.

That said, finding a balance for each novel is a difficult undertaking.  On one hand, it’s not our job to “tone it down”.  It’s our job, as authors, to push the envelope and reach out there.  If we need toning down, Anne, our editor, will request revisions. 

On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that books with wide commercial potential are not that edgy in terms of gore, odd and complex worldbuilding, and disturbing adult themes.  When Alphas was written, it wasn’t written for publication.  It was written as a self-indulgence.  There is a difference between a couture gown and a mass produced garment, and as authors, we have to be mindful of that.

I once had a discussion about it with an aspiring author who declared in a shocked voice that he wasn’t going to compromise his artistic vision in the name of selling copies.  We’re not talking about sacrificing artistic vision, but about making the work more accessible to a wider audience.  (I really didn’t see and still don’t see any need for melodrama on this subject.  We’re all grown-ups, but that’s an entirely new post.)

To reiterate, we’re not going to work on this until 2011, so there is really no need to worry.  And I expect, when we start working, you will probably see some snippets and can judge which way the work begins to lean by yourself.

And that is that.