WeWriWa—The world of After begins

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. The rules have now been relaxed to allow a few more sentences if merited, so long as they’re clearly indicated, to avoid the creative punctuation many of us have used to stay within the limit.

This is the opening of “Rising from the Rubble,” from Saga VII (the 2000s) of my magnum opus Cinnimin, which begins on 12 September 2001. Many times throughout, the division of time into the world of Before and After is evoked. This profound sense of change is most keenly felt on that first day after the cataclysm.

The Pashto proverb which opens this part of the book, Toro tyaro pase rana razi, was said to Mancika and her friends when they left the Afghan restaurant yesterday. She and Ammiel will name their daughter, born nine months later, Rana, which means “light.” (It’s obvious I don’t have much experience writing Arabic scripts!)

The morning of September 12 dawned on a battle-scarred, wounded world torn asunder, populated by people left in a traumatized daze, shell-shocked, their emotions too raw and discombobulated to even make an attempt to try to begin making sense of what had happened to them yesterday, a day which had started in a world which now seemed to belong to a primordial era long ago and worlds apart, in the era of Before which had forever ended and been cruelly replaced by After.

But in the safe haven of the Poconos which Mancika, Ammiel, and the Brandts had sought healing refuge in last night, that precious world of Before seemed on the surface untouched. The fresh air, unblocked sunlight, unpolluted waters, undisrupted grass and trees, and scenery devoid of mushrooms clouds of sadness, toxic debris, and the haunting reminder of the presence of absence and the absence of presence, strongly stood as a defiant, powerful reminder of how life always stubbornly, insistently found a way of carrying on despite everything. Yesterday hadn’t been the end of the world, but rather merely the last day of an old world which existed no more and now lived only in memory.

Mancika awoke entangled with Ammiel as early morning light shone through the curtains. For a brief moment, she wondered where they were and what had happened. Then she remembered the events of yesterday and how the worst day of her life had ended as one of the most beautiful days of her life. Nothing had been a dream.

Ammiel stirred awake and gently stroked her face, his eyes bathed in adoration. Mancika responded by snuggling against him and wrapping her top arm around him more tightly.

The ten lines end there. A few more follow to finish the scene.

“So this means you don’t regret anything we did last night and that you still love me as more than a friend,” he said in relief. “For the briefest moment, I couldn’t help wondering if you only reacted from the heightened emotions of yesterday. Deep down I knew that was as genuine as it comes, but it seems natural to feel some insecurities the morning after.” Ammiel ran his fingertips along her body.

“Now you’re back to being a beta,” she teased him. “Usually it’s the woman who feels insecure the next morning. You must be all alphaed out after everything you did yesterday.”

Ammiel grinned at her. “Believe me, I’ve still got plenty of alpha left in me. I can give you a morning treat right now to show you. A good night’s sleep was just what I needed to get all my energy back.”

WeWriWa—The most natural next step

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. The rules have now been relaxed to allow a few more sentences if merited, so long as they’re clearly indicated, to avoid the creative punctuation many of us have used to stay within the limit.

“Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy,” from Saga VII (the 2000s) of my magnum opus Cinnimin, depicts the events of 9/11 and their immediate aftermath on that day. I’ve skipped ahead quite a bit, to near the end, after 23-year-old Mancika Laurel has arrived in the Poconos (kept a surprise from her until she got off the rented VW bus) with her best friend Ammiel Garfinkel.

Mancika spoke to her grandma Cinnimin on her missing roommate Courtnie’s cellphone and heard the exact words of Charlotte’s prophecy, which Cinni only saw for the first time last night. She also had an intense flashback when she tried to shower, remembering the broken pipes and sprinklers in the mall this morning, and had to run several baths before all the dust finally dispersed.

Now she’s retired for the evening, and has a hunch what the important thing Ammiel wanted to discuss with her might be.

Mancika wrapped herself in the pink robe hanging on the bathroom wall and stepped into a pair of matching slippers. For the first time since 8:46 this morning, she was finally wearing clean clothes, untainted by smoke, dust, debris, trauma, and fear. She could never regain the state of mind she’d had early this morning, but it felt so good to be physically pure and shed those tainted garments. Now all she needed was a good night’s sleep, hopefully safe from nightmares, and she’d be one step closer to incrementally getting back to a semblance of normalcy.

“What did you want to talk to me about, Ami?” she asked as she sank onto the bed.

Ammiel took her hand and began speaking in a shaking voice. “I’m sorry if I sound like a broken record, but all those hours when I had no idea where you were or if you were even alive were the worst moments of my life. Until then, I never realized just how much you mean to me, and what the thought of losing you could do to me, but now I know we need each other. Losing you would’ve been like having all my oxygen cut off. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

The ten lines end here. A few more follow to finish the scene.

Mancika squeezed his hand. “I knew what you were going to say even before you started, and your answer is yes. I could tell your feelings for me had changed after you saved me from the rubble, and I instinctively realized I felt the same way too all of a sudden. It seems so right and natural, like we were always meant to be together in every single way.”

His face flooded with relief. “You have no idea how worried I was, thinking you’d laugh at me and insist I wasn’t thinking straight in the heat of the moment. I was afraid this might end our friendship forever or create an awkwardness between us.”

Mancika put her other hand on his shoulder. “There’s no one else I’d rather be with. I was also afraid this might spoil our friendship, but we’ve always been so perfect together, this can only make our bond stronger.”

Her heart pounded in unison with his as they kissed as lovers instead of friends for the first time. From the very first moment, it felt so right and perfect, and she knew she never wanted to be with anyone else.

Storylines that make no sense, Part V (Ammiel abandons Mancika after 9/11 and doesn’t reunite with her until 2006)

If you’re observing Yom Kippur, may you have an easy and meaningful fast!

Inspired by the love story of Penelope and Ulysses, a number of my couples have been separated for many years, and when they finally find one another again, there’s a very emotional reunion. That works in some circumstances, like Sparky and Lazarus, who were on different continents during WWII and unable to even get in touch by mail afterwards because of the chaos and disruption of war. It also works for Cinnimin and Levon separated by the Vietnam War and the psycho God-complex general holding Levon hostage years after the war ends.

But in the case of Mancika Laurel, Cinni’s granddaughter, and her soulmate best friend Ammiel Garfinkel, who are so perfectly matched and so intimately close they’re routinely mistaken for a couple? It makes no sense for Ammiel to abandon Mancika at the worst time in her life!

My original plans for the 9/11 part of Cinnimin involved Mancika coming in from Hempstead, Long Island to stand watch for her roommate Courtnie, and then walking back home over the Brooklyn Bridge. While evacuating, she’d collapse in a coughing fit from all the toxic dust and debris in the air (which she’s also coated with) and be unable to get back up.

Ammiel finds her while coming from the other direction in search of her, and carries her home. He spends the next month or so helping to take care of her, and then splits without any explanation.

Four and a half years later, when they’re living in Paris, Mancika sees a man at an outdoor café proposing to a woman who rejects him. They get into an emotional argument, and he runs to jump off a bridge. When Mancika catches up to him and he turns around to face her, Ammiel is overcome with shame and remorse for how he walked out on her.

They go back to Mancika’s apartment and spend all night talking, and Ammiel explains his disappearing act. As dawn starts breaking and a thunderstorm strikes, they become lovers.

It doesn’t make any sense for Ammiel to walk away from his best friend, his twin soul, because Mancika directly experienced all those traumatic events and he didn’t. That’s not in his character or their relationship dynamic at all!

I considered changing it to them going away to Courtnie’s family’s summer house in the Hamptons and becoming lovers, closer and happier than ever. Ammiel would then leave without explanation. I also thought about him leaving a note or confessing he was thinking about leaving because he felt their friendship had been ruined, but just couldn’t do it.

In the first two scenarios, I thought about Mancika becoming pregnant and then introducing him to their child at the reunion in Paris.

Instead, Ammiel rescues her when she’s starting to sink into the rubble of Ground Zero (which New Yorkers called The Pile) during a desperate attempted search for Courtnie and family friend Raizel Brandt-van Acker. Ammiel completely transforms from his usual beta male self into a decisive alpha who takes charge of the situation, gets her out of the city, and takes care of her every step of the way.

As Ammiel tells her many times, those hours when he had no idea where she was or even if she were still alive were the worst moments of his life. Losing her would’ve emotionally destroyed him, and the day’s events woke him up to the realisation of just how much she truly means to him. Mancika instantly senses his feelings for her have changed, and she finds her own feelings have also shifted.

That night in their safe haven in the Poconos, Ammiel confesses his feelings, and Mancika says she feels the same way. They become lovers, and their first child is conceived from their very emotional first union. In the spring of 2002, they’ll be married, and their daughter will be born in June.

It’s enough of a jerk move to walk out on your longtime best friend with no explanation, but even more of a jerk move to do so after she survives a terrorist attack that gives her PTSD and lung issues. Reuniting them four and a half years later isn’t sexual tension, it’s just making Ammiel look like a terrible person and fair-weather friend.

Storylines that make no sense, Part I (Livia and Liam run away to Wyoming)

I’m starting a new series about past storylines in my older drafts that make absolutely no sense when I look back on them as an adult. While these posts will be about my own unique stories, I hope everyone can learn from them in general as I talk through my past mistakes, why these storylines don’t work, and how they can be fixed.

Let’s start with one that’s technically still in the future of Cinnimin, but which was set down in the hot mess first draft of the sixth Saga of the Sewards book, my failure of an attempted dual timeline, Livia Filliard and Liam O’Malley running away to Wyoming after graduating high school in 2003.

Livia is the fifth child of Cinnimin’s daughter Vanilla and Kit’s son Philip, and Liam is the firstborn of Violet’s daughter Carmine and her lawyer husband Lucifer. They’re born only two weeks apart in September 1984, and are inseparable best friends from infancy. In December 1996, at Livia’s bat mitzvah, they become a couple.

Vanilla is not very pleased by this development, since she’s long been tormented by a dream about Livia and Liam growing up to be married, plus the prophecy in their foremother Charlotte Lennon’s 17th century book discovered in 1985. She wants Livia to marry a Nice Jewish Boy, not a Wiccan, and doesn’t like anything else about Liam either.

So the night they graduate high school, Vanilla orders Livia to go to Liam’s house on Great Island and break up with him, and Livia dutifully obeys.

The only people who really disapprove of this relationship are Vanilla and her timewarped oldest daughters Karyn and Daphne! It’s not as if the entire family is against it! And by the year 2003, grown adults no longer needed their parents’ permission and approval to date or marry anyone! This isn’t the Victorian era, when people had no choice but to sadly accept their word as absolute law and end a happy, loving relationship.

Liam is alone in the house when she arrives, with a candlelight dinner where he proposes. Livia goes through with her mother’s cruel plans and runs out, but soon changes her mind and returns. Liam presents a plan for how they can run away together so no one can ever find them, and they hide in the house of Livia’s aunt Atlanta (Cinni’s youngest child) until they’re married by a justice of the peace the next day

They flee to Wyoming in a rented flatbed truck loaded with all their belongings (furniture included!), transfer all their money to a local bank, and enroll in the University of Wyoming very last-minute. They choose Wyoming because it’s so sparsely-populated, and no one will know them there.

Liam’s little sister Flidais eventually learns where they went, and enrolls at the University of Wyoming herself. But when Livia and Liam graduate in 2007, they move to Boston for grad school, where Livia’s close cousin Vikki lives, and Flidais goes with them, transferring to Boston University.

Why even bother running away to Wyoming (or any state with a small, sparse population) if they don’t intend to hide there forever? Not just Vikki and her husband Avraham David live in Boston, but also her father-in-law, Rabbi Joshua Brandt, his wife and six other kids, and Livia’s oldest sister Karyn and her family. That’s like being smuggled into a neutral European country during WWII and then returning to Nazi Germany before the war ended!

Vanilla obviously uneasily tolerated Livia’s relationship with Liam for six and a half years, when she was a minor and could’ve been forbidden from it. Why suddenly when she graduates high school is she ordered to end it? And why would either Livia or Liam think they have no choice but to leave town to live happily ever after? Again, only Vanilla, Karyn, and Daphne ever really disapproved of their love!

I know 18-year-olds don’t have complete cognitive development and are famous for making decisions based on emotions and not thinking through potential long-term outcomes, but it’s not like they’re preteens. What’s the worst Vanilla could do to them if they defy her, and why would Livia passively let herself be bossed around or kidnapped?

The University of Wyoming sounds like an awesome school, but nothing about the state itself fits who Livia and Liam are. They can go to school in Boston from the start, and Vanilla will just have to stew in her own juices until she finally comes around and accepts their union.

WeWriWa—An unwelcome journey

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. The rules have now been relaxed to allow a few more sentences if merited, so long as they’re clearly indicated, to avoid the creative punctuation many of us have used to stay within the limit.

This comes from Chapter XVIII, “Merciful Deliverance,” of my alternative history about Dante and Beatrice. It’s now July 1288, and Dante’s summer holiday with Beatrice’s family in Fiesole was interrupted by the news that Beatrice’s husband Simone is back from Cyprus. All the men of the household went back to Florence (Fiorenza) to confront him for what he did to Beatrice last year.

That violent confrontation ended with de ’Bardi stepping on a nail before he could be dragged to a judge to start the annulment process. Five days later, his cousin came to relay the message that he’s dying and wants Beatrice by his side in his final hours. Beatrice’s father isn’t entirely sure this story is true, and makes sure to take precautions before setting out.

Ser Folco stalked upstairs, muttering under his breath. A significant amount of time had elapsed by the time he reappeared with Beatrice. He gathered up his sons and son-in-law, who all had some very choice insults for de ’Bardi, and then we went outside to the horse pasture. Several grooms saddled up our horses, while two other manservants hitched up a carriage.

“If this is an elaborate hoax, Mone will pay for it.” Ser Folco pulled out his dagger for a servant to sharpen. “I don’t like making Bice travel before she’s been churched, but she’s probably much safer now than she was just after the birth. This also isn’t a pleasure jaunt or a long, arduous journey.”

I didn’t have to be asked to know he expected me to accompany her in the carriage. After a servant opened the door, I climbed inside and helped Beatrice in.

The ten lines end here. A few more follow to finish the scene.

Once the door was firmly shut and the carriage began moving, we joined hands.

“No matter what he says to me, I’ll never go back and live as his wife,” she said. “I married him out of duty, the same reason most people marry. What other choice did either of us have but to wed the people our fathers chose for us? But once I’m free, we might be able to contract our own marriage. I can’t imagine my father and brothers objecting to you becoming my second husband. They’ve loved and trusted you like family for years.”

“I don’t care if anyone disapproves or if they try to make you remarry someone else. We were too young to object to our betrothals before, but now we’re adults and can stand up for what we want instead of obediently doing whatever we were ordered to do.”

“May God’s ears be attentive to the voice of our supplications.”