Look Alive Chapter Thirty Five

Some of you have noticed the posts coming fast and furious and while I can see the end...we aren't quite there yet. I'm just sort of ready to put this serial to bed and I'm trying to burn through as much as I can.



Story Behind The Story
As far as I know this is never going to come up, but I have kind of created a backstory in my head for Juliana's parents (Melanie and Daniel) and Caine. In my little backstory Juliana's mom falls in love with Caine as they get to know each other--he makes her feel special, but she doesn't act on it because she still loves Juliana's Dad. Caine develops feelings for Melanie too and when Caine finds out Daniel is cheating on Melanie with Tess he encourages it so they will finally get separated.

Caine sends Juliana away to be married because he's also maybe sorta secretly hoping to cause a wedge between her parents along with all his other creeptastic cult reasons. When that fails he decides to marry Juliana and well, we all know how that ends.

Chapter 33 + 34
Rhett finally meets the Florida gang ! The tension between Rhett and Sawyer was something I actually really liked writing.

Chapter 35

Recap
Juliana has been in South Florida, helping Rocket Olsen with interviews for her book. But Juliana's due date is coming up and Rhett flies down to drive her home so she can give birth. While in SoFlo he meets the UL gang and even talks to Rocket about his violent past and he and Juliana's relationship. 

With only 24 hours before they leave this happens:

I turn to her but I can’t see her in the dark. I turn on the lamp that was by my side of the bed and I get a glimpse of her face. She’s smiling and her eyes are watery.

“Baby-,”

“Rhett, my water broke.”

  
Chapter 35
Playlist
-1- The Dream Song by Nathan Reich
-2- How Will I know by Sam Smith
-3-  Dance with me by Clarensu
-4- Don't Wait by Mapeie

More SoFlo Pics / Thirty Three and Feelin' Free

So...this title is a total joke because I don't feel free at all. I was editing  "Jacket Serial"  and then looked at my screen like this:

I ended the serial on a huge cliffhanger thinking I would think of what happened next and I have no idea what comes next.




More SoFlo Peeps ! 

Raleigh Cameron
I said this before but Chris Evans without any hair.

Elisa
The fun thing about doing a serial six years later is all their picspirations have aged too This is Alice Greczyn, who was on a bunch of ABC family shows but hasn't done anything lately. Also, I don't imagine Elisa as this thin.

Rosa
I don't have one for Rosa..maybe Lucy Hale as she appears on her Instagram.

Chapter 32
So, the gang is back together and while this may seem like a short chapter this was something I hadn't been able to write in a while, I have never been able to fit "the gang" back into the story. Then one day it clicked that I  needed to put Juliana into their story.

That said I did realize that in some ways writing Elisa gave way to me writing Corrine in HMLIS.

Double Chapter Post (They're short don't get too excited)

Recap
Juliana is with Rocket in SoFlo and she's reconnecting with the South Florida gang through the interviews. When Juliana gets her last word with Brad she decided she wants to come to the interview with Caine. 

Chapter 33
Playlist
-1- Melancholie by Illuminine
-2- Fallen by Gert Tabener

Chapter 34
-1- Only You by Yaz
-2- Wilderness by Jon Bryant
-3- Gravity by AJ Rafeal
-4- Closer to Fine by Indigo Girls

SoFlo Picspirations / Chapter 32

So, we are back in Florida and this feels a long time coming. I actually had to do a re-read of UL a few months ago because it had been so long. Okay, let's do some picspirations of the South Florida gang. I only have a few...

Sawyer Miller
For me Sawyer will always be Anton Yelchin. He was my first "picspiration" and I was just so sad to hear how he passed away last year when his car rolled down a hill and pinned him to his house.

 
Cecilia Winston-Hill
 Cecilia is still and always will be Ashley Simpson, who is actually about the same age as the character now.

Sam Morgan
 Ryan Kwanteen seems to fit

Greg Hill
I've never really had one for Greg. The closest I can come up with is short haired Scott Foley...who I never noticed has nice golden eyes.


Recap
Juliana is back in Florida helping Rocket with her oral history. Rocket has interviewed Cecelia Winston Hill, Greg and Sam about their relationship and yada,yada, yada, you guys just want to see Elisa don't you ? 

Chapter 32
Playlist

-1- Come Away With Me by Tracey Chattaway
-2- Sunrise by Nora Jones
-3- Beach by Axel Flovent

Craft Talk / Thirty One

Until some time around Christmas, you can’t write: Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…”


Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like: “The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave. Never his. - Chuck Palahniuk

Thanks, Chuck !
I am going to do something I never ever do and talk a little bit about craft. I came across this essay by Chuck Palahniuk about thought verbs. He gives some writing challenges and I've found myself trying to do some of these challenges in my novellas because it's too hard to do in a full serialIt's basically about showing vs. telling.

I like the advice and I thought I might blog a little bit about my "process: but seriously all the example paragraphs in this essay are the worst.

Chapter 30
We made it back to the prologue ! Whew, I have been writing and writing to get here forever.

Let's talk a little bit about that last scene with Juliana. That scene is based on a scene from this movie called Pan y Rosas about the strike of immigrant custodial workers.The main female character named Maya has an older or aunt or possibly even friend named Rosa who is really against the strike because she doesn't think Maya understands what she gave up to help bring Maya to America.

Rosa then tells Maya basically about how she was tricked into working in a brothel in Tijuana for five years order to pay her way and she's telling Maya for the first time about what she had to go through every night so she could come to America. She's talking about herself in the third person and  I can't find it in English, but the Spanish dub is on YouTube and the scene is at about 1:23:50.




Anyway, I just like this scene because like UL it's this character who had this awful thing happen to them but can't talk about it and then one day the just snap...IDK, it's always stuck with me.
Okay, moving on.

Recap
Rocket Olsen is writing an oral history about United Light and is headed down to South Florida to get some interviews. Juliana, 8 months pregnant, has decided to come with her for a few weeks because she's ready to tell her own story.

We are getting into what I see as Part III of this serial and the chapters are going to be shorter.

Chapter 31
We're going to fluff it up a little...

Chapter 31
Playlist
-1-  Falling Slowly by Louise Dearman
-2- Let It All Goby Birdy

Dirty Thirty

 Hey, Lile

So, apparently there is this thing where bodybuilder couples create extreme couple fitness workouts and I feel like this could pertinent to my Leon/Sera QC interests

Especially this

 


 
Novella Update
As I said last time the reason I've been MIA is because I've been working a lot on these novellas, but I'm getting back in the groove of posting because I have officially written ''the end' on UL3.

Also...of the four novellas I have planned, two of them are done..which is so crazy to me.

Mostly, I'm working on the Maxwell/Haley novella and it is vastly different from what UL3...but also very similar ? Right now it's about 17,00 words, I think it will have about a couple thousand more words before it's done.

I'm really enjoying these novellas and I have a lot of gaps in them in case they could become full serials...kind of like QC and NA

Chapter 28 +29
When I was working through what would become the prolouge for UL I first imagined it as kind of a flash fic called "The Book" where we fast forward to Rhett and Juliana being normal, living with Rhett's family and Rhett being upset because a book has just come out exposing everything that happened in UL that they'd been hiding.

So, when I wrote the prologue I knew Rhett was upset about his UL secret getting out but that was all I knew. I knew there would be a reporter who befriended them but I had no idea her name would be Rocket Olsen or that she'd be former Coast Guard.

I was also hesitant about the storyline where Rhett gets suspended form the Coast Guard because of UL because I thought it would take away from him being upset about the book, but I also really needed to establish a reason why Rhett was so afraid of this.

Also, kudos to those of you who picked up on Rocket's draft of United Lies being dry--that was intentional so you could see why she had to change the format.

Recap
Rhett's been stationed in a remote island in Kodiak, Alaska and Oregon for the last 7 months and gets promoted to Jr. Lieutenant. He and Juliana start trying to slowly heal things over letters and e-mails...but then Rhett discovers Juliana is going back to South Florida with Rocket Olsen to help her write an oral history of UL. He thinks it will only bring bad things to them, but Juliana wants to tell her own story.

Now Rhett is visiting for Thanksgiving and they are going to hash it out in person.

Also keep in mind that Juliana took the fall for a car accident Rhett caused while drinking so she doesn't have a driver's license.

Chapter 30
Playlist 

-1-  I Was Born A Dreamer by SHEL
-2- Ho Hey by Jon D
-3- Never Let Me Go by Florence and The Machine

The One With The Gender Reveal / Chapter 28 +29

 

So, there is going to be a gender reveal in this chapter and when I was looking for an image to put at the top I found some things we need to discuss.

Gender Is A Social Construct

But seriously, I love this idea :

  

 Also this...is there a third option ?

FZAFSOAAWA Returns

So, I have just been writing and writing a million different things and not really focusing and it's been kind of a nightmare.

As I was going through my mess of files and I noticed I had a file called APO I didn't remember creating.  When I opened it I saw a short outline I wrote for FZAFSOAAWA(Formless Zombie Apocalypse Fantasy Space Opera Aliens Assassin Wizard of Oz -ish  Thing). I'd kind of forgotten about the outline, so I feel like maybe I could do this after all the other novellas are done. As usual I'm not sure how it ends or what the characters names are but I have more of it plotted  than I thought.

And...I now have a two song playlist.

The APO was just my shorthand for apocalyptic.

Chapter 27
I know a lot of you wanted some Rocket/Juliana time and this chapter was all about that and we are slowly inching back into UL territory. 

The reason Juliana is so obnoxious in this chapter is because she's dealing with that classic female thing of people not believing what she says. She tells everyone that the baby is Rhett's but she still has to prove it with a pregnancy test and she's a little bit hurt by it. 

I think we're at a point now where I can talk a little bit about how UL3 came to be. Even when I was writing UL I kind of knew I wanted Juliana to have a child and I had sort of imagined her with a young son and it being the two of them against the world.  I originally imagined this is what UL2 would have been about, but I couldn't write for it at the time. I think I was going to make Brad the baby's father.  I was going to do it in OHG too, but then I wrote a miscarriage and I just never got around to it.

Anyway, I finally got to explore this whole Juliana as a mother thing with this serial.

Chapter 28 + 29 
These are double chapters because of how they fit into the story. They are also both shorties.

Recap
After everyone tells Juliana she needs to get a paternity test and a fight with Jocelyn Juliana decides it's time to get out. She first goes to talk to Rocket in South Carolina and then she goes to Connecticut to visit her Dad and invites Rocket to look at some old UL documents. Rocket gets her Dad to open up about why he joined UL for her book and Tess convinces Juliana to get the paternity test.

Rhett is still working in Alaska and Juliana's been giving him the silent treatment since she visited and he told her to get an abortion and accuses her of cheating on him. But when she finally gets the paternity test she gets a nice little FU moment.

Chapter 28  (With link to 29)

Playlist
Chapter 28
-1- Waiting by Bootstraps (I'll use this song in everything until you pry it from my cold bitter hands)
-2- Say You Love Me by Jesse Ware

Chapter 29
-1- You Are Gold by The National Parks