We all do this, right?

[Norm Cowie]

Okay, get this... I was at Of Dark and Stormy Nights writers conference and I went to one of Barb D'Amato's sessions. Just for an exercise, she gave us ten minutes to write a short beginning to a book. I wrote this and it seems kind of promising:

Bugs.

Okay, sure, maybe technically a centipede isn't a bug. But when one's crawling over your face, you don't get very nitpicky about stuff like that.

Besides, she had other things on her mind.

Like the darkness. Black as an attorney's soul.

And the ropes. She could tell by their tightness that he'd earned that Boyscout badge.

Now if she had time, she could probably deal with all of this. But she'd never been very good with deadlines. So it didn't help that the boat was sinking. And that the centipede was digging a nest near her ear.

But if she was going to die, why did she have to be naked?

And not only naked, but laying next to a dead Senator?


Yeah, I know. You'd have thunk I could have done more in ten minutes. Sometimes you just take an idea like this and put it in your "Mayber later" files.

But you keep thinking about it.

Fleshing it out.

Like 'who is she?' How'd she get into this mess? And will the centipede end up with a cozy home or go down with the ship?

Poor centipede.

Hmmm.