Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The Water Door Magician

Parker Crush is 16 and she's amazingly strong. She can lift a safe, a solid steel one, that would usually take her aunt, two other locksmiths, and old George to hoist and shuffle on unsteady feet across the locksmith shop, and she can heft it over her head. But to look at her you wouldn't know that she's that strong, in fact, she's kind of scrawny.

She's my teenage, lesbian, super locksmith girl in the book I'm writing called The Water Door Magician, a book which just a month ago didn't have a title. Why did I make her gay? Because I wanted to write something PG and fun for the young adult GLTB crowd. It can't all be adult, R-rated and/or serious, can it? I want this girl to be sure of herself and confident. A good person, but of course she's got to have flaws or she won't be interesting. She's got long reddish-blondish hair, and green eyes. And she carries a leather pouch with lockpick tools inside and one day she breaks into the school disciplinarian's office, but when she opens the door she finds a world called Torwin, and they need her there. Until she finds this place, she's just a punk picking locks and playing pranks on people. The reason she picked that lock is because she heard cries for help on the other side. She had no idea they were coming from another world.

It's fun to write, but it's plot driven and I keep wanting to wander off on small details that don't carry the plot. Like the way Parker's mother Marnie twirls her hair at the kitchen table like she's a little girl deep in thought and how she often reminds Parker of a fidgety little girl, twirling her hair and absent-mindedly eating the French fries off of Parker's plate. 

That's all I got tonight. It's almost midnight and I need to go to bed. Besides, Parker needs another couple of paragraphs before I can let that kid rest, and she's a growing girl who needs her sleep.


3 comments:

Heather said...

Love this - can't wait to read more!

Genevieve said...

Thanks, Heathers.

Tom Harold said...

Reddish-blondish hair is sometimes called "strawberry blonde." I know that because I think it is gorgeous so I paid attention at some point in my life when that detail floated past me.

This story sounds like fun!