I've never served on a jury before, but I've been ordered to appear in Superior Court for jury selection tomorrow. I'll treat it like research and be looking for new characters or storylines. I could probably describe my circumstances in such a way as to get out of it, but there really isn't a valid excuse. We'll just wait and see what happens.
There are 28 'groups' who got summons. the first seven can check in via zoom. The next 15 (including me) have to appear in person. The remaining six don't have to check in until Tuesday. They didn't say how many were in a group, but it's too large a summons to all fit in the courthouse for selection and still maintain social distancing. We're required to report to the casino conference center the next block over!
I'm feeling less endangered by the group since I got my second dose of vaccine this week, but I'll be cautious nonetheless. So, I'm on the mainland instead of the peninsula, ready to do my civic duty.
I mentioned last week having an idea that was born fully grown from the head of Zeus, as it were. Writing on that idea is progressing apace--in fact, I've got a draft of well over 55,000 words already in two weeks of development. The story is practically writing itself. Yesterday on the ferry to the mainland, my characters were so noisy in my head that as soon as I got to my abode, I had to start writing and completed another chapter.
Today, I've started exposing it to my "Sausage Grinder" patrons on Patreon who like to read the raw unedited version of my stories as I write them. I hope someone comments on it so I can tell if it is as good an idea as it feels to me.
Told from an omnipotent third person point of view, Team Manager watches a new girls' basketball team form in a small school in Iowa. But within this microcosm, we see the "Four-Eyed Runt" of the sophomore class, Dennis, an abused boy who thought he couldn't go back to managing a team after last year's horrid experience, become the beloved team manager for the girls.
Of course, that means some romance is going to slip into the story, and with romance some hanky-panky, as we discover the former cheerleader Brenda, who decides to play basketball instead of cheer and becomes a kind of mother figure to Dennis. What do mother's do for their little babies?
Then there is the tall ace basketball player, fellow-sophomore Natalie, on whom Dennis has always had a crush. They aren't old enough to date, but they can pretend to. And pretend to hold hands. And pretend to kiss...
The story couldn't be complete without the small and rapidly maturing cutie from the freshman class who just happens to be the little sister of the local drug dealer--one of the bullies who tormented Dennis last year.
There is moonshine involved, attempted kidnapping, snowstorms, sleepovers, and teens being teens as their parents attempt to cope with the changes they are seeing and protect their kids from an abundance of bad guys. Join me for the ride on Patreon. I'm writing fast, but I'll only post three or four chapters a week there--at least for a while.
A helpful reader of my blog contacted me last week and told me there was a story in the NIS universe running that also featured a boy becoming team manager for the girls. I don't normally read in that universe and have advised him that I will definitely avoid that story. Story ideas often develop in parallel with other authors and there is no reason not to give my version of one. I'll just avoid being unduly influenced by the other story until I've finished this one.
And, my development of both Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain 2 and A Place Among Peers is moving forward--perhaps not as quickly, but more deliberately than Team Manager.
So, like I said, there is plenty of excitement in my little world. But no matter how many things run afoul in my life, they aren't at the scale of a 400-meter container ship getting sideways in the Suez Canal and holding up $9billion in oil shipments and $10billion in other cargo shipments every day! Of course, that's all Biden's fault. Not sure how, but I'm sure the spin is coming.
Read on and enjoy! Life in a book at least has chapter breaks.