How I Wrote 20,000 Words in 15 Days

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Men in transit in Bangladesh by Wonderlane

If you’ve heard of NaNoWriMo, then you know that 20,000 words isn’t that impressive. In actuality, someone writing 1,666 words a day should have 25,000 words in 15 days. But, as my students are fond of saying, I have a million things to do, so 20,000 is a goal post I’m willing to celebrate.

This is the as yet unnamed novel-in-progress, my first crime thriller, set in the Arabian Gulf, featuring an ensemble cast. This snippet takes us into Manu point of view. He is a young man from Nepal, who arrives in-country, hoping to earn enough to help halt his ailing mother’s decline.

Tell me your likes/dislikes about the genre – so much to learn and write.

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“You! Where you go?” The man in the robe was back, making a straight line for Manu.

“Toilet,” Manu said. He didn’t stop walking, lest he embarrass himself in front of all the eyes, now watching.

The man in the robe grumbled but matched Manu’s pace. He entered the bathroom, amazed at how clean it was, compared to the latrines he used in Nepal.

When he re-emerged, the man in the robe was waiting for him. He looked up from his phone and indicated with the radio antennae he was to rejoin his group. Manu walked, as slowly as he could, taking in the glittery countertops on the other side of the visa line. There were perfumes, chocolates, and toys.

“Okay, now,” the FBJ representative was shooing them all like schoolboys towards a roped column in front of the visa desk. “One by one,” he said. “One by one.”

They stepped forward. Manu looked at the young man who was stamping their documents. He took each passport from the ledge above his desk, flicking through the pages, his eyes passing over the face in front of him in an instant, before the heavy stamp descended.

The FBJ rep scuttled them through the baggage area, where the men wandered through a heap of rice paper bags and taped boxes, trying to identify their own.

“Mafi?”

Manu turned not understanding.

“Your bag?” The rep asked, eyeing Manu with suspicion.

“I lost it,” he said.

The rep shook his head but handed Manu a piece of paper. “Sign,” he said.

Manu looked at it, wishing he had stayed in school longer, as Amita had insisted. He couldn’t make out much anyway, the contract was in Arabic. But there, above the signature, he could make out numbers, since they often used the same ones in Nepal for license plates.

“This says 1,000,” Manu said. “What’s this? The salary? They promised me 1500.”
The rep clicked his tongue, peering at Manu as if seeing him for the first time. “You don’t want this job? You can go back.”

The other men were signing their contracts, passing the one pen among them.

“I want to work,” Manu protested. “But for the amount they said.”

The rep began walking, the column of men following him as they left the brightly lit airport into the warm night. They walked the length of the parking lot, to a dark corner, where a bus waited for them, lumbering in the dark.

Manu climbed the steps, promising himself he would speak to the rep later.

“Sign,” the man said, putting an arm across Manu’s chest. The contact and the pen were pressed at him.

Manu signed. His legs quivered after so much time standing. He collapsed into a seat, his shirt sticking to him. Unlike the airplane or the airport, the bus had no air conditioning. Humidity rolled through the open window and up and down the aisle like a beast with moist breath. They creaked their way through the city, mostly at sleep, and largely in the dark. The bus followed roads that snaked away from the bright lights of the perimeter, until they entered a neighborhood with dusty streets, and grey bricks made of concrete. There was laundry hanging on drooping lines and smashed vehicles waiting outside of garages. Men were walking around in collared shirts, and lungis, the cotton loincloths of the Indian subcontinent.

When they shuddered to a stop outside a chain link fence, running around a group of squat, brown buildings, spotlights illuminating the guard station at the front gate, the pit of dread in Manu’s stomach grew.

 

 

Life After NaNoWriMo: Get Readers Reading

Love Comes Later 2014coverI didn’t make it to 50,000 words this month nor did anyone in my NaNoWriMo MOOC. I don’t feel badly about this because I do have 13,000 words, or more than half of the opening act of my novel. The project is a sequel to Love Comes Later, which was released in paperback last month. Never a dull moment around here.

What happens now? I get people to read. Because so many of my books are deeply rooted in culture, and increasingly cultures that are not my own, I need a special kind of beta reader: a cultural “expert.” I have that word in quotes because this expert doesn’t necessarily have a PhD or publish in a particular area. Rather they are cultural expert informants: they are the characters I am writing about in their real lives.

That means this week I have sent my first 7 chapters into the hands of female Qatari university students because the main character of the sequel is Luluwa, a twentysomething fashion major who notices a strange man lurking around her family compound.

I’m biting my fingers until I hear back from my three teams of beta readers. But that’s what makes writing so exciting: you engage test readers to tell you what you got right and what you can improve on.

Stay tuned! In the meantime, if you haven’t read the original, get on it. Once the jinni shows up in the sequel, it will write itself!

 

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If Not Now, Then Never.

A red-hot iron object, transferring heat to th...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The saying goes: “If not me, then who? And if not now, then when?”

That’s how I feel about the month of November. There’s a lot going on in my life and I bet yours as well. Grants, grading, and novel writing. And that’s only at work, not counting the children, the husband, the friends, etc. etc. etc.

I’ve not been to bed before 2 a.m. in quite a while. Mid October to be exact during our last vacation.

Why? Why do this to myself? To write a scene like this: the moment at the heart of the first part of my novel, when the stranger who has been appearing to Luluwa, the main character, reveals himself.

What do you think – are the sleep less nights worth it?

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NaNoWriMo 2013: Work in Progress, somewhere in Chapter 8

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Luluwa sobbed, her eyes alighting on the photo of her sister. She had never felt alone with Fatima was alive; she always had someone to listen and give her counsel, someone patient, kind, loving, maternal, everything their mother was not. Her shoulders shook with the force of her fatigue. “Come back, Fatoom,” she said, her voice breaking. “Come back.”

“She can’t,” a man’s deep voice answered. “She can’t.”

Luluwa raised her face, meeting the eyes of the man she had seen in the courtyard. He was sitting on the bed beside her. She sat up in a rush, scrambling away from him, in her haste falling off the edge of the bed. This is a dream, a dream, a dream, she thought, clutching the edge of the bedspread. Wake up!

A head of curly black hair peered over the edge after her. The eyes, the irises not red but amber, peered over at her.

“How did you get in here?” She whispered.

“Same way you did,” he said. He smiled and the whiteness of his teeth blinded her. “Well, I walked through the door.”

She followed his gaze to the closed door. “If anyone finds out you’re here,” she said.

“Like that man in the kitchen who was yelling at you?” The stranger’s eyes turned dark, smoldering.

She could smell something burning, like chicken left in the oven too long.  “Abdulla will be furious,” she said. She sat up, hoping this was the moment in the dream that he would dissipate. Luluwa willed herself to wake up in a pile of sweaty sheets.

“I’ll go if you want me to,” he said.

“Yes, yes, go.” She stood pulling him up with her from the edge of her bed. The instant she touched his skin she gasped. The heat emanating from his arm scorched the inside of her palm as though she had grabbed a pan too quickly from the oven. She fell back against the wall, cradling her right hand.

“Sorry,” he said. He hovered over her.

The feeling of heat drew closer and she averted her face, the warmth causing a flush to spread across her cheeks.

“I’m doing it again,” he muttered. “Sorry. You can’t come that close to me yet. I have to learn to control it.”

“How?” She asked. “How are you doing that?”

He gave her a small smile. “I’m not like you,” he said.

“If Abdulla calls the police, they’ll find out an Indian was in my room,” she said. “All hell will break loose. They’ll deport you.”

He laughed. The sound wasn’t musical but she couldn’t say she had ever heard anything like it.

“If they try to remove me before I want to go,” the skin around his eyes crinkled. She realized he was older than she had thought at first glance. “ Yes, as you have said, hell will break loose.”

Another rush of heat, warmth trailing up her arms, causing all the fine hair to stand at attention, the back of her neck growing sweaty. She felt drowsy, which didn’t make any sense, because wasn’t she already dreaming? He hovered over her again, lips close to her neck.

“Are you a vampire?” She breathed.

He laughed, again a sound warm yet eerie, drawing her further outside herself so she felt as though she were hearing her own voice from a spot on the ceiling.

“Nothing so modern or western as all that,” he said. Or did she hear him think it? Luluwa was having a hard time figuring out where his arm ended and hers began.

“I’m a jinn,” he said.

“What’s your name?” She asked, entranced by the rings of fire that had appeared in his pupils.

“You can not speak it in any of your human tongues,” he said or more like sighed, a whisper into her mind. “But it sounds like Javed.”

She shuddered, her body overwhelmed by the heat of him, sweat beading across her forehead.

“You came to punish me?”

His laugh echoed in her head, reverberating in her ears.

“No, my darling,” Javed said, his breath caressing her skin like a touch. “I came to save your grandfather. And I fell in love with you by mistake.”

She fell into him, her knees soft, her palms stinging at the direct contact with the skin of his chest. She couldn’t draw away, though the heat was increasing, the feeling now like a thousand stinging nettles.

“Careful,” he said, pulling away her hands, the touch of each of his fingertips singeing her wrists. “Don’t get to close to me.”

“Or you’ll burn me?” She lay back on the bed, like a doll, her limbs devoid of her will.

“No,” he said, hovering over her, his eyes now glowing flames. “If we’re not careful I will possess you. And then we’ll have real problems.”

 

 

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