Dinner with Mom: GBU read-along to cp 19

Can I just say right off that Rachel’s mom is NOT pattered after my mother? I originally tried to bring in Rachel’s family as a way to ground her, make her real. Family is also why she has a brother, though we don’t see him much. Just having him not there is a story in itself. But family is often the biggest influence on or lives whether we know it it or not, and as I began sketching out a transitional chapter, all these new threads I hadn’t plotted in the original outline began to come together.

Though there is no action or shoot-em-up, chapter fourteen has got to be the most pivotal moment in the entire book. It’s the beginning of everything, and if you only read one chapter in the read-along, this is it.  It touches on human/inderland tensions and acceptances. It touches on witch biology, and how Rachel’s parents met. The Turn is in there, and the first clues that her dad isn’t her birth father. That her dad and Trent’s dad had a history is there, the make-a-wish camps, and that Rachel was alive due to genetic tinkering–the full realization again, books away.

Oddly enough, I’ve noticed that most of my writing usually has a culmination of stray threads right around chapter 13-15. I think it’s a pacing thing, but now, when I’m in rough draft, I kind of wait for it, eager to find out the direction of the last 2/3rds of the book.

Oh, and I had to laugh the other day. I got to the sex scene with Nick, and the pages had been ripped out. I’m reading the copy that I’d given my then 15 year old. He was probably reading sex scenes anyway, but I didn’t want him reading one _I_ wrote.   -laugh-

Happy Friday! I’ll pick the read-along up on Monday.