Borrowed characters, non-profit, etc.
Hope the changes in POV aren't stressing anybody...this whole epic is going to do that a lot. I'm going into everybody's head for a while: Mort, Shooter, Nadine, third-person impartial -- whatever it seems to call for. I may play with telling the same scene more than once, with different POV's. The chapters are short because I figure it's easier to stick with one POV per chapter/scene.
It is definitely going to get darker -- though not as dark as the movie, I don't think -- but not for a while yet. I lean more toward building tension and suspense than freaking people out. Mostly.
Feel free to offer an opinion, but if you think it stinks, I want to hear why.
Mort woke on the couch at twilight, blinking in the gloom and wondering how long he'd slept. Had he made any progress at all on the new book today? He was having trouble capturing the mood he wanted; his hero wasn't suffering enough, and he still wasn't happy with chapter four. He sat up, scrubbing his face with his hands, .
When had he laid down for a nap? Lunchtime? Mort shook his head impatiently. Nothing new there, he'd always tended to be a night-owl, especially when he had a book going. He reached for his wire-rimmed glasses, folded neatly on the coffee table beside an empty Doritos bag. Settling them in place, he rose from the couch and stretched.
Going into the kitchen, the writer fixed a hasty supper of shredded wheat and brown sugar, crunching away with guilty pleasure. His orthodonist would probably have a fit, but he'd floss within an inch of his life -- later. Now, to get back upstairs and -- what was that? There was a slip of paper -- a cash register receipt with that day's date -- posted beside the phone with a name "NADINE" in bold block letters on the blank side, and a seven-digit phone number. A local prefix, by the look of it.
"Nadine?" he repeated to himself, puzzled. "Who the hell is Nadine, and how did I get her number?"
He already knew the answer to the second question, really; it was the answer to all the nagging questions about how anything happened: John Shooter. Nothing drastic, not lately, but knowing he was still out there made Mort edgy. "Okay, rephrase that: who the hell is Nadine, and how did you get her number?"
There was no answer. Sometimes there was, sometimes there wasn't. "Whatever," he muttered, and put the strip of paper back where he'd found it. Climbing the stairs to the loft, thoughts of Nadine, whoever she was, slipped away, and he sat down at his desk to call up his latest efforts.
It wasn't the worst stuff he'd ever written, but he knew it wasn't good. When it was right, it flowed a certain way. It balanced gracefully on the page. There was a rhythm to it. This wandered all over the place, and he couldn't seem to focus on it well enough to fix it.
Mort lounged back in his chair, regarding the screen of his laptop with dissatisfaction. His long-fingered hands toyed with the Slinky he kept on his desk for such pauses, and he mumbled some of the worrisome passages aloud, trying different phrases to see if anything sounded better than what he'd already written. "A leisurely walk? Strolled toward the center of town? Ambled? Meandered? Crap, maybe I should just start the scene with him in town....?"
Raking his hand through his flyaway hair, the writer reached into his desk drawer, extracting a thin pack of cigarettes and a blue disposable lighter. "Yeah, but if he's in town, I need to establish Main Street another way...." He fired up the smoke and inhaled hungrily. "The tree-lined avenue...."
Pausing to puff at the cigarette, something caught his eye outside the secret window. Across the cove, a light twinkled through the trees where the new cottage had been built during the summer.
It annoyed him that of the whole lake, somebody had chosen to build right there, exactly where it would distract him the most. While the construction had been going on, he'd wandered over to look at the site a couple times; it was a simple one-bedroom cabin with a loft, similar to, but not identical with his own. He hadn't given the matter a lot of thought until the new people had moved in, their lights distracting him, catching his attention as a helpless moth is drawn to brightness.
Hmm...he scribbled down the phrase. There was no telling when it might come in handy.
.