Tag Archives: Deirdre

Leaving Home As a Kid

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“I wandered off as a kid, just kind of left. I never wanted to run away, nothing like that, but I liked being in my own head and staying there, alone.” Och squeezed the brim of his hat between his hands, bending the thick material together. “I remember once coming home from school, pretending to sleep, just so I could miss my stop. That’s how I thought. I had to pretend to sleep and wake up in case someone was watching. It was just…I just wanted to see where the bus went. I always got off at the same stop and I didn’t know where it went. I wanted to know where it went. And so I opened my eyes like, ‘Oh, no, I missed it. What do I do now?’ And there wasn’t anything. It was all the same, streets and stores and apartments. I stared out the window as we went north. And then it was only apartment buildings, wide avenues and then empty fields. The bus came to a turnaround and the driver asked me if I was lost. I told him that I had missed my stop.”

“How old were you?” Dee asked.

“I don’t know. I think maybe Grade Three.”

“You rode the bus alone when you were eight?”

“I did the same thing on the subway another time. I went to the end of the line. I collected a transfer from every station.” I stared into the water as if he could see his small hands clutching bits of colored paper. “I was never scared or anything. I was just getting off and on the train, collecting transfers. It was so great…like magic.”

“my bad side”: Three Versions of an Opening

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I continue to work on the opening to my novel, my bad side. I have the original, written three years ago, Version One:  2012-10-11 00.26.33I liked my face in the cab window, fading in and out with the shadows, my eyes there, my mouth, and then all of me, my neck and chest, my bra strap just there and then  gone and just the buildings, the slumped scaffolding and empty street. There was a kind of liquid sound, almost like rain, inside me, a fluid crinkling in my brain, chewing into my ears and down my neck..Crystal said she had brain cancer. She was always saying things like that, determined to be the loneliest, the purest of all. I’d have to call her when I got home.

Two years later, I put together Version Two: IMAG1953I watched my face fade in and out against the shadows and buildings, my eyes and mouth, and then all of me, my neck and chest, my bra strap suddenly there and then gone into the scaffolding and lights, and then a police car, its blue and white lights swimming back and forth, and an officer stretched out against the passenger side, his right leg angled into the road. The cab turned, and my face was in the window again, the flat stone of Battery Tunnel and then the gravel and bent-over plastic fences in front of my building. “$9.40.”

And now, I have a combination of Versions One & Two (without references to Crystal or the police): Version Three: IMAG1915I liked my face in the window, fading in and out with the shadows, my eyes there, my mouth, and then all of me, my neck and chest, and then everything gone, just the buildings, the slumped scaffolding and empty street, Bowling Green locked and empty. The cab rattled heavily over a rutted grate as I watched a line of light glide across my arms, jump down and vanish in a flash across my dress. I was home. 

Pitch Conference: Post Mortem

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Writing is a business. Nothing more than that. It doesn’t matter how great the story is nor what a clever little wordsmith I might be. Ontario Northland to MoosoneeIf I can’t pitch the idea, that’s it. It all boils down to the hook, the copy read by that deep-voiced movie trailer guy: Deirdre Sinclair must come to terms with a moment she cannot remember, a past she cannot forget. 2012-10-06 15.43.43I think I did all right in the end, getting the interest of three out of four editors, each of them noting my spin: It’s The Happy Hooker meets Born Free in the style of Cormac McCarthy. xavieraI gave them a minute to think about that and then went back into it: “She was orphaned as a baby. She’s into performance sex. And she has an exotic cat! A serval! Do you know what that is?” serval As my coach pronounced, “Everyone loves a cat. Does he live? Whatever you do, don’t kill the cat!” I couldn’t. I love that crazy cat.

“my bad side” book jacket

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I’m off to another writing conference this weekend and have put together a first draft for a book jacket blurb on my bad side:

Deirdre Sinclair comes home late one night to find her sister’s drunken boyfriend armed and her prized exotic cat bleeding at his feet. She decides to shoot and asks questions, then fleeing the city to Canada. Dazed and injured, she remembers her tiny legs dangling from a high chair, her infant sister, Crystal, pulling cereal off the counter and their mother dead on the floor, pills scattered about her head. serval and girlDeirdre’s journey with Apollo to the barren landscape of Newfoundland forces her to confront her fears and loneliness, bringing to mind her isolated childhood, her years at a boarding school and an aborted practice as a veterinarian before moving to New York in an attempt to reconnect with her sister. Immured in alcoholism, Crystal shuns her sister and keeps the world at bay with her boyfriend, Derek, a fire fighter who lost his company in 9/11, and who has developed a chronic obsession from working at the site. Deirdre makes a dramatic turn from working with abandoned animals to the escort industry and performance sex in her attempt to come to terms with her traumatic youth and a moment she cannot remember, a memory she cannot forget.