Shall the Undead Rise?

Lady Aibell is closing its doors, so the psi-vamp chef Marc and his full-figured nibble are soon to be homeless once again. It's Friday, time for a Friday Flash; in honor of the upcoming demise of "A Gourmet Meal," I figured I'd revisit my favorite angsty cooking psi-guy, his lover, and the villain who demanded a full-length work so he could torment the pair. (Which text is also now homeless, though it wasn't contracted anyway, as that would have required that I polish the thing. ) Flash after the jump--just a more or less random section, while I dust off the rest and try to decide if it'd be more fun to work on that or NaNo. Or both at once.

Happy Friday!

***


{Sasha, a food writer for the daily paper, is at a party, on assignment.}

Tracking a waiter with a tray of divine-smelling hot mushrooms, Sasha made it to the far end of the hall, but when he disappeared into the kitchen, she had to admit defeat. At least temporarily. No other food was on offer in this part of the party, but something odd seemed to be happening. People tip-toed close to a knot of potted shrubbery, ducked through, then came away from there a few minutes later looking…enraptured. What on earth?

Excuse me while I check this out.

Sasha laughed at herself a little. Food writer, remember? When did you get the investigative reporter bug? But it was a puzzle, and she wanted to know. She wound her way very carefully around the edge of the crowd--a woman of her size quickly learned not to try to barge her way through a collection of people holding spillable things--and when she reached that plant-festooned knot, she went forward and found An angel.

A young man who might have stepped whole from a Renaissance painting: golden hair, pale wheat skin, eyes the color once reserved for Mary's cowl. The overhead lights, so bright elsewhere, seemed gentler here, caressing him. Haloing.

But hard on the heels of Sasha's first awed impression came another: Devil. They do say Lucifer was the handsomest. She blinked, looked at the blond, blinked again, and had to resist the urge to rub her eyes or curse aloud. Where the rest of the crowd looked the same from glimpse to glimpse, all polished and primped and display-model perfect, the blond changed. One moment, he was movie-star handsome, a golden boy in truth with his hair and his skin and his perfectly white teeth, eyes bluer than a summer sky and lips so deeply pink they might have been grown on a rose-bush in Heaven.

And the next, he was-- Oh, Hell and damnation. The man she'd seen at that food-show taping. The one who'd given her chills.

He smiled at her with those pink, pink lips; she looked away. From the corner of her eye, she could see him still, blond but wholly different, paler than the...mask? But no, that implied a cover and she could see through it. Veil? Cowl? Something unnatural, anyway. Horrible.

So, how, then? What? A spell? I don't believe in magic! Whatever the answer, she could see his other face so long as she didn't look straight at him, an oblique view offering the paler, uncharming face with eyes like frozen swamps, murky blue and capable of hiding anything. Swallowing her. God, I need to get out of here.

She backed away, not willing to show that man her back. Predictably, she knocked into someone. Unexpectedly, that someone didn't fall, but caught her easily. She knew the feel of those hands, even here, where he had no reason to be.

Marc.

For a moment, she was so relieved that her mind seemed to have stopped--he was there, her lovely, oddly dangerous lover, and he would protect her from the blond with the changing face. But that lasted only a moment before fury chased it away. "We talked about this. You following me." She turned her head to be able to see him and the blond both, one from each eye, shivering at the odd symmetry. But anger melted through fear, melded with it to become a cold ire like nothing she had ever known. Half surprised her breath didn't fog with the chill of her words, she went on. Softly, ever-so-seriously. "You promised you'd stop doing it!"

"I did."

"Then you lied." She wanted to shrug free of his grip, but that would mean admitting she felt his touch, the stroking caress that thrilled her even now. "Or broke your word."

"I. Did. Not."

She would have bruises, she knew, from the force of his sudden grasp, though he looked calm enough, his gaze direct, unflinching.

"Was this a test, then?" His accent thickened with every word. "My apologies for not understanding; I had not thought you that sort. If you would have me go, you need only speak the word. But," he loosed his hands, smoothed her sleeves as though trying to erase the wrinkled evidence of his touch, "there is one thing I would say to you, if you would hear it."

She could not speak, all her anger sidetracked somehow, drained away by his constant tiny caresses, by the waxing and wane of his voice. Even fear seemed muted, soothed. What did he want to say, want her to hear?

"I am not whichever man did such to you."

Ouch. "Sorry. Let's start over. Marc, hello, what a surprise. Not that it isn't always lovely to see you, but," she ground out the last words: "why are you here?"

"Not a test, then. You did not send the invitation. Merde. I am sorry, cher amie, I had thought the message from you. Someone called the restaurant." His gaze swept the room, seeking whomever had arranged this--and Sasha had an odd impression of more than eyes looking.

Her own gaze followed his when it locked; she was unsurprised to find he was staring at the potted greenery, but shocked to realize the blond was gone. Had he vanished in a puff of smoke?

If I did believe in magic... She wrapped her arm around Marc's waist, leaned into him, grateful for more than his warmth. If I did, but I don't, nor fairy tales, either. No fairy godperson sent him here. He did not appear to rescue me from the evil wizard, I am not some damsel locked in a tower, and falling into his arms is so not in the plan.

I'd crush him. There was no humor in the thought--there never was--but this time, it wasn't as certain as usual. She remembered the ease with which he'd caught her moments earlier. And that odd feel she'd had, once or twice, that he was hiding his strength. The way he'd pulled her onto his body, that night... Yeah, he's built well, but he's still just a man. And I'm two women, as far as size goes. Two and a half, maybe.

"You're perfect," he murmured.

She looked up to find him smiling down at her.

I don't believe in magic. Or mind-reading.

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What Makes a Classic?

A week to go before the semi-organized insanity known as NaNo I haven't yet reactivated my account, but it's on the agenda--yes, once again, the hermit shall be NaNo-ing.

Comes the question, then: writing what?

NaNo’s rules are few, but rules there are:

**the goal is to write 50K of a single novel begun no sooner than one second into the day of Nov 1.**

So I can't pick up one of my unfinished works, I have to start something new. Usually, I go for something completely unpublishable, just for the fun of it; last year, I wrote a male-sub transformational piece. No magic, no fantasy, no romance--that is, none of my standards--just a chance to explore an experience and a character that had happened to occur to me.

I had a blast. Which is the point to NaNo. If I could find a publisher interested, you can bet I'd carve out some time to polish that manuscript!--but even without that, the story was fun to write. And that's what NaNo is about.

This year, I've fallen far behind on my personal goals; illness has sidelined me too damned many times, and all the bits of life that get backed up when one is sick have stolen much of my writing time and energy. So I'd really like to get at least one more submittable-quality manuscript finished this year. Two would be good. (Do I hear three?)

But it's not necessarily going to happen during November. NaNo is for fun! Some years, I've gone into it with no idea for a story; other years, I've had characters and settings; once, even a sketchy sort of outline. This year, as I often do, I have a question to explore:

What makes a classic--and how long does that label remain?

Why is "The Cold Equations" so enduring, when "Eve and the Twenty-Three Adams" is already less a warning than an historical curiosity?* What makes Nedra Tyre's "Recipe for a Happy Marriage" and Donald Westlake’s "Nackles" so very popular and so frequently, deservedly, reprinted, while Susan Casper's "Under Her Skin" remains more or less a cult favorite?

Of the stories that have endured into our time, which shall be carried into the future? And why?

Picture if you will a far-future library, with a section of "Classic Literature circa 1950-2050" What books or stories might you see? What about "Classic (Genre)" instead of the dates? Pride and Prejudice is still popular now; shall it always continue to be? Poe, I've no doubt, makes it onto the first colony starships headed Outbound, as does Shakespeare, I think. Who else goes along for that ride?

Alice, probably. What about Harry? What makes a classic, and how long before that label expires?

Next month, that question shall obtain a narrower focus, at least to me. To wit: at some minutes past midnight, when my NaNo character takes her first pixel-dust-laden breath, what titles shall she see?

I can't wait to find out!

Happy NaNo-ing!

--

pxj


*If you don't know all about Eve, you must not spend enough time with me! I rant about that story regularly.

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