Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Abandoned Dogs & Fallen Women

I've come up with a skeleton of a plan for the Romance Challenge 2008. I'm going to write a modern American gothic novel tentatively titled Abandoned Dogs and Fallen Women. While clasped in the throes of an anxiety-fueled insomnia last night, I mentally sketched a very loose plotline about a woman and her loyal dog -- now that's a true romance -- a river and the grey midwestern countryside which will hopefully "...blend... cruelty, terror and erotocism..." (Norton).

Then about 3 in the morning I finally fell asleep and had a nightmare about sexual predators posing as Target employees, luring women out of their backdoors with roses, and then slaying them and meanwhile every son, nephew or boy cousin I have ever had was suddenly 2 years old, in my living room and had their shoes on the wrong feet and all of the pairs were mixed up and I had 5 minutes to correct the footwear situation, take a shower, not get raped or killed, get the kids safely to a babysitter, and get to work. That woke me up for about another hour.

Eeesh!

7 comments:

Pavel Chekov said...

To hell with the romance challenge.....write about your dreams. Why can't I dream like that?

La Sirena said...

Eat more spicy food.

Pelmo said...

Pictures, we are going to need a lot of pictures for preverts like me.

La Sirena said...

???

Pelmo said...

Your romance novel will not only have to be explicit verbally, but also pictoraly. Old farts need pictures.

JoeC said...

I agree with Pavel Checkov...forget the romance novel and just publish your dream diary. Dang. A lot of dreams, if you write them down, you realize are word metaphors that add insight to something you've experienced/thought about since your previous REM state. I'm trying to think of what your dream metaphor is saying and, well, I give up :-)

La Sirena said...

I did. I opened with a dream. We did Romance Challenge, but have decided to morph into a writer's club. The next assignment is a short story in the genre of historical fiction.