The Lucky 7 Meme

In lieu of today's usual collection of poorly-focused pictures, rambling and nearly-incoherent thoughts about toast, and/or rants against things that don't really deserve it, I have been made an offer by Michael Offutt, who blogs here and who is important enough in the blogging world that this is an offer I can't refuse -- call Offutt "The Blogfather," which I've just copyrighted or trademarked or patented or something, so if you do call him that, you owe me, let's say... $750,000,000. And you know you repeated it to yourself as you read it, so you've already called him that. I take checks, but I prefer cash.

Anyhow, Michael Offutt posted a meme, and I'm not entirely sure what that is, but it involves me talking about my writing, which is, like, my fourteenth favorite topic of conversation (my first 7 are me, followed by, in order:

8. Sweetie

9. Mr F and Mr Bunches.

10. Leftover pizza, which is technically number 8 but I lied and listed it at 10 because I didn't want Sweetie or the Babies! to feel bad.

11. The older kids (Oldest Daughter, Middle Daughter, and The Boy), who are all over 18 and consequently I can make them feel as bad as I want because when kids are under 18 making them feel bad about themselves is "abuse" but when they're over 18, doing the same thing is "treating them like adults."

12. Me, again.

13. Other things that I wanted to eat but I already filled up on leftover pizza, which, to be totally honest with you, I ate the other things too but I'm not going to admit it because you'll think I'm a pig.

Which brings us to my writing, checking in at number 14, and while I really like writing, and I really think you ought to like my writing, too, I don't especially like talking about my writing, which is fine because technically this "meme" (I think it's a kind of wheat) which Michael Offutt bestowed (?) upon me doesn't require me to talk about my writing at all. It simply requires me to:

1.. Go to page 77 of your current Manuscript.
2. Go to line 7.
3. Copy down the next 7 lines - sentences or paragraphs - and post them as they're written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know.

SO! I did not pick one of the many fine books that I have written which include books about a maybe-crazy astronaut, how a guy and a sexy cop invented Christmas accidentally to avoid a madman taking over the world, a collection of scary stories about things like a family that steals corpses to bury them under their own house, a funnily sad (sadly funny?) story about a woman who dies and then tries to escape the afterlife with the help of William Howard Taft, a collection of essays about me and stuff I think, and a collection of literary short stories including one about two cowboys wandering in a neverending desert...

I did not pick any of those because I am about value. You have paid a lot of money to come to this blog and I intend to...

... wait... waitaminute... YOU DIDN'T PAY ANYTHING TO COME TO THIS BLOG, DID YOU?

Stupid capitalism.

Anyway, I didn't pick any of the aforementioned books which you should definitely go buy and read and then buy again to make sure that if you lose your first copy you can re-read the second when the mood strikes you. Instead, I have picked an as-yet-unpublished work of mine.

This is from a novel that I began working on 5 1/2 years ago. It is a serious literary novel that features absolutely no talking pineapples, ghosts, ex-presidents, or astronauts listening to Led Zeppelin on the radio. Instead, this novel deals with a brother and a sister during one year of their lives. The character you are going to meet is "Bumpy," the brother. His real name is Dylan, but everybody calls him "Bumpy" because when he was little, his sister, Sarah, accidentally dropped him and gave him a bump on his head... and potentially injured him more seriously.

The book itself covers a year of their lives -- Sarah's fiance drowns under mysterious circumstances, their mother gets put into a hospital, a mysterious home movie surfaces, and Bumpy and Sarah stop talking. At the start of this excerpt, Bumpy, who has no visible means of support and no apparent job, but who dabbles in a variety of things, has come back home with his date for the night, to find an envelope waiting in his mail that he cannot wait to open; when his date comes back from using his bathroom, she finds him sitting there:

Bumpy was sitting on the couch. He had the envelope ripped open and sitting next to him. A packet of papers sat on his left leg but he wasn’t reading them. He was looking at the cup of coffee. In the dim light, she could not tell what the expression on his face was; it was in shadow. He turned. “Do you want some coffee?” he asked. She nodded, and before he stood up, he said: "They want to buy my script. And produce it. And make it into a television series. I’m going to be rich.”

The book is called Up So Down. It'll be available soon. In the meantime, did I mention that I wrote a bunch of other stuff?

And I'm supposed to tag 7 other writers, so I'll name:

Andrew Leon

Rusty Webb

Sandra Ulbrich Almazan

Heather Arundel

Jannet Ridener.

Both The Blogger Girlz, if they haven't already been tagged. I don't know their real names.