So I finally, finally, FINALLY got my rewrite of One in Vermillion to Bob, and he’s trying to format it now, which is not easy because the chapters numbers are all screwed up, but he’s just glad to have pried it out of my tense, panicking hands. And so now I am finally, finally, FINALLY back to Rocky Start. Which is no longer Excellent Oddities. Now it’s Rocky Start again.

And I’m looking at the first scene, which I wrote, and I think it’s too long.

Here’s my theory of scene length: I think scenes should get shorter as a reader moves through a book.

That’s not always possible of course, Vermillion’s scene are all over the place which worries me, but when you’re talking about first scenes, those are always going to be the longest in the book. The readers aren’t tired yet, they’ll read for quite before getting impatient, but not forever, so my rule of thumb is that no scene including the first scene should ever be more than 3000 words.

[Just to be clear, that’s my rule for me, not for anybody else. I have a hell of a time plotting (enter Bob) so I need rules to hem me in; many other writers do not. Do not take that A Rule. It’s what I use to keep myself from nattering.]

So here we are with the first scene of Rocky Start, which I like, and it’s 3357 words. I really need to cut a couple of pages. (A page is about 250 words.).

So the first thing I do is figure out the conflict which here is Rose vs Junior. But there’s a whack of words at the beginning where the conflict is Rose vs Coral (1060 words). And then there’s a bit at the end where the conflict is Rose vs Max (873 words), followed by a coda that’s Rose vs Lian about Max (275 words).

Obviously the solution is to cut everything that’s not Rose vs. Junior. But I don’t wanna. I like the way Rose and Coral’s friendship is introduced because it also sets up Rose’s world. I like the stuff with Max because it establishes his character before the next scene, which is his, and also connects him to Rose so that reader has a romance contract right off the bat. (I think the reader sees Max as the love interest. I hope the reader sees Max as the love interest. That’s the plan.) And I like the coda with Lian at the end because it rounds off the beginning stuff with Coral: The reader knows these are her two closest friends and Max is her love interest (I hope), so the character set-up in in place.

But that’s what I want. What the reader wants might be something entirely different. Anytime I find myself saying, “I really need to set this up,” I put the brakes on. Reader don’t give a damn what I need to set up, they just want a story. And a story that starts with a 3000+ word scene starts slow.

On the other hand, it’s a first scene. So maybe . . .

I don’t know. So I’m putting it up here again. I might have done this before, but there’s been a lot of rewriting since then, so if you have some spare time and want to read this, what I need to know is:

Is this too long?

Does the conflict switch too often? Rose’s goal never changes, but the antagonists do. I think.

What parts read slow and you think should be cut?

And I thank you for your help.

Chapter 1
ROSE

It’s very difficult to glue a plastic doll’s head on a glass bottle when you’re tense. I mention this because that’s what I was doing on Day Three of what was shaping up to be the second worst week of my life, right before the moment my world went totally out of whack. And it was pretty much devoid of whack before that.

I was standing behind the marble-topped counter in Oddities, the secondhand store where I was the sole employee, having just made a pan of lasagna for dinner—don’t forget to put that in the oven later, Rose—trying to glue the doll’s head on this paregoric bottle I’d found buried in the shop—lotta things buried in this shop—trying to keep from smearing glue on my work apron—not the tie-behind-the-waist kind of apron, the kind you put over your head with the straps crisscrossed in back—and trying not to give up and just scream with anxiety. The apron’s a little frumpy, but that’s good because nobody pays any attention to a middle-aged woman in an apron, and the last thing I wanted was for anybody to notice how upset I was. I don’t get upset. Other people get upset and I fix things for them. Also my aprons have huge pockets. Pockets are very important in my life. If nothing else, they were someplace to put my hands so I didn’t tear my hair out as I tried to figure out where the hell my daughter and I were going to live for the next eleven months, seeing as we were a little short of cash and possibly about to be evicted from our longtime home above the shop. I mean, we have friends, we wouldn’t be living on the street, but this was our home and my job and Ozzie was dead and . . . .

As I said, bad week.

The bottle was my latest attempt at Outsider Art, which is just a fancy way of saying that I never went to art school so I was making it up as I went along, which is also pretty much the story of my life. I wasn’t even sure what this was going to be, I was just sure that bottle needed a head. Possibly because I was losing mine. And the glue wasn’t working. Nothing in my life was working.

Somebody rattled the front door to the shop, and I thought, Just come in, it’s unlocked, we’re open, and then I realized I’d forgotten to unlock it and flip the CLOSED sign to OPEN. I looked up and saw through the window that it was Coral Schmidt, the proprietor of Ecstasy, this amazing German coffee shop and bakery next door. The food there is truly orgasmic, although I’m pretty sure Coral named the shop that so she could say, “This is Coral in Ecstasy,” every time she answered the phone.

I started around the counter to let her in, but before I got there, I heard her key scrape in the lock, and then she came in, saying,
“Rose? Why didn’t you open the door?”

“I was coming . . . ” I started and then stopped because Coral was dressed head to toe in tight, shiny black. She looked like the Angel of Death. If the Angel of Death was a voluptuous blonde in her seventies.

“That’s a lie, you haven’t come in years, Rose,” she said as she closed the door behind her. “I don’t know how you stand it.”

I took a deep breath. Coral was a good person. It would be bad if I strangled her from rage, anxiety and sexual frustration. That I did not have because who needs sex? All that naked thrashing about with somebody who lies to you? I mean, really.

“I worry about you, honey,” she said, standing on the other side of the old counter. “It’s not good to go without sex for years. And years. And years. Probably because you dress like an old woman.” She looked closer. “Is that one of Betty Baumgarten’s old dresses under that horrible apron? You’ve been thrifting again, haven’t you? Are you braless? You’re fifty years old—”

“Forty-nine,” I said. “I’m not fifty until Halloween. And the shop’s closed, there’s a sign and everything, so underwear is unnecessary. And uncomfortable.” I looked down at the top of my loose apron. “How could you tell I’m braless in this?”

“You’re a C cup and things were shifting under there.” Coral shook her head. “Beauty is pain. Put on a bra. Somebody wonderful could walk through that door at any time, and there you’d be. Not ready.”

Coral was always ready.

She was flashing enough seventy-three-year-old cleavage—D cup—over a wasp-ish waist to cast doubt on her mourning, although I had to give her credit for maintaining her figure or at least corralling it with powerful undergarments. She would have pulled it off, too, except for that thing on her head, resting on her long faux-blonde hair: a wide-brimmed black picture hat full of black tulle bows with a black spotted veil swathing her face.

“That hat needs a crow,” I told her, squinting at it. I would have put a crow on it, first thing out of the box.

“No,” Coral said, rejecting my crow idea, but thankfully moving on from my non-existent sex life and my equally non-existent underwear. “Have you heard from Ozzie’s lawyer yet?”

“Barry? Why would I hear from Barry?”

“About Ozzie’s will.”

Coral really loves drama. I think it’s the heat from the ovens at her place and all the caffeine.

“Do you think he left anything to me?” Coral leaned forward, and her breasts came with her, threatening the black satin that bound them. Ozzie used to call her The Couch because he said she was well-upholstered. “I’m spending the night on The Couch,” he’d say, “If anybody calls, tell them I’m in Ecstasy,” and then he’d head over to her apartment above her bakery. He didn’t call her the Couch behind her back; that was his nickname for her, in front of her face. Ozzie didn’t go in for tact. He didn’t go in for people, either, although he went into Coral with surprising frequency for a seventy-eight-year-old misanthrope.

Pike, her other friend with benefits, was her younger man. Seventy-two.

I was about to tell her that I was pretty sure that Ozzie hadn’t made a will, but then the bell rang again as the door to the shop opened, and a man came in: middle height, pale and dark-haired, good-looking except for his beady eyes and air of superiority. Your basic upper class-weasel who shared Coral’s inability to read a CLOSED sign.

“We’re closed,” I said to Beady Eyes, disliking him on sight.

“You must be Rose Malone.” He smiled at me with cold eyes.

“Must I?”

“My father’s right-hand woman and who knows what else,” he said. “Unfortunately, since Oz is dead now, he doesn’t need a right hand.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, as Coral swiveled to look at him.

He smiled, no warmth at all. “I’m Oz Oswald’s son, Oswald Junior, and I’ve inherited this building and the business. I’m sorry for your loss, but you have to go.”

I just stared at the jerk for a moment, at his feral smile and tiny eyes. He looked nothing at all like Ozzie. Which was going to make it easier to beat him to a pulp for trying to kick me and my kid out of our home.

When I didn’t move, he said, “What part of this don’t you understand?”

He smirked and I hate smirkers, and he was ordering me around, and if you want to see me go ballistic, try telling me what to do (unless you’re Ozzie), plus under all that bravado, he was nervous, so this was a scam. I walked out from behind the counter and around him, opened the door, and pointed to the street. “Out, Limb of Satan.”

His smirk got smirkier. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“This is a con, a truly stupid one,” I said to him. Twelve years traveling with Poppy’s father and then nineteen years working with Ozzie, and I had mad skills for spotting the crooked. Just not for avoiding them. I picked up the heavy reproduction of the Maltese Falcon on the counter, the one that Ozzie had called our security system although it didn’t do anything except look menacing . I could feel all that tension and frustration spiraling into rage. It really was not the day to mess with me. “Get out, Junior, and I won’t beat you to death with a movie prop.”

“Oz never mentioned a son,” Coral murmured from behind Junior.

“Look.” He reached into an inner jacket pocket, retrieved his wallet, and took out a paper. A photo fell out as he did, and he held the paper out to me as Coral scooped up the photo. “Here’s the DNA report. Oz Oswald was my father.”

I took the paper, which was basically a bunch of figures I didn’t understand under abbreviations I didn’t understand, but at the top it stated that Oswald Stafford was a 97% match as a son of Joseph Oswald. “This is just a paper,” I said, handing it back to him. “Anybody could have typed this up and printed it out. And his first name was Ozzie, not Joseph.”

He shook his head. “My mother gave me that. It’s real. Plus, she would know who my father is. I’m Oswald Junior.”
Coral was looking at the picture, rapt. Then she came to the door and showed it to me.

A young man with a sharp face, dressed in dull green fatigues, was looking at a tall slender woman next to him wearing khaki with the blackest, straightest hair I’d ever seen, framing skin so pale she looked dead. Beautiful but dead. Morticia Addams in the flesh.

“That’s my mother, Serena Stafford,” Junior said. “And my father, the man you knew as Oz Oswald. We thought he was dead all these years.”

“That could be anybody,” I said, and gripped the Falcon tighter, but Coral shook her head.

“It’s Oz,” she whispered as if seeing a ghost. “I remember. God, he was so handsome then. Six-pack abs. He could crack a walnut with his glutes.”

I glared at her, not pleased to know about Ozzie’s glutes and even less pleased that she was supporting Fake Ozzie Junior and his fake DNA test. “I don’t care if it is Ozzie. He’s just standing next to a vampire, that doesn’t mean they made this guy together.”

“This is ridiculous,” Junior said. “You need to get out of here now.”

I opened the door wider and gestured with the Falcon. “Ozzie’s estate hasn’t been settled yet, so nobody has any idea who gets what. And I have a bottle that needs a head. Get. Out.”

Coral was still staring at the photo lost in her walnut-cracking memories, but Junior took it from her, put it back into his wallet with the DNA test, and tucked both away in his jacket pocket, his eyes darting all over the place as if looking for something.

Then Poppy appeared in the kitchen doorway, home late from high school, tall and blonde and beautiful and eighteen and not like me at all. Well, I’m tall.

“You’re making lasagna for our wake?” she said to me. “Ozzie would have loved that.”

“Yes,” I said, and then Junior moved toward her.

“Hello,” he said to her. “You can stay.”

”No.” I moved around him fast to block him from my daughter, Falcon in hand, and he grabbed my arm hard to shove me out of the way as Poppy said, “Mom?”

I tried to jerk my arm away and said, “Get out!” as Coral reached up and pulled something out of the crown of her hat.

When he didn’t let go, I whacked him hard on the shoulder with the Falcon.

He yelled and staggered back, and I drove him toward the open doorway, swinging the Falcon, yelling “Stay away from my kid, you perv!” until he fell out the door, dragging me with him as he stumbled onto the sidewalk.

Poppy said, “Mom!” and Junior let go with one hand and backhanded me.

Coral snarled and slashed at him and I saw a line of red blossom on his sleeve, as I slapped my hand on his chest to push him away, dizzy from the blow and started to swing the Falcon again with one hand and slid two fingers of the other hand into his jacket and onto his wallet while his eyes followed the Falcon. When he pulled away from me, half a second later, the movement of his body pulled the wallet out of his pocket, the lift hidden in his motion. I pressed closer and dropped the wallet into one of my apron pockets, but then he reached into his jacket and I thought he’d felt the lift after all, so I shoved him away again and swung the Falcon low and hard, aiming up for his hot spot, just like Ozzie had taught me—

And he disappeared.

Momentum from the missed swing to the nuts kept me moving and I staggered a little, but I could see Junior sprawled out in the street now, courtesy of a new guy standing in front of me who turned to look at me with no expression at all: Middle-aged, dark hair with grey at the temples, weather-beaten, unshaven, gaunt in dusty black, a man who looked like he’d traveled far and hadn’t enjoyed it and hadn’t eaten much on the way. Another Angel of Death.

With a weary sigh, he put down a massive backpack beside a dog that looked like a big black wolf.

“I had that,” I said, annoyed because I do not need rescued and I’d really been looking forward to neutering Junior.

“You did not have that,” he said calmly, which irritated me further, another one of those Master of the Universe guys, but then I saw Junior get up off the street and charge him, and I yelled “Behind you!” and the dog barked, and the new guy took a step sideways and did a leg sweep and took Junior down again. His expression never changed. Stoic R’ Us.

Okay, I was beginning to warm to him.

Junior went with the fall and rolled to his feet, surprisingly agile. The two of them spent a moment looking at each other, sizing each other up, the dog baring its teeth by the good guy’s side, and I thought, This is getting dangerous. Junior was looking actually threatening now, but the new guy was really scary, grim and expressionless.

Then I saw my friend Lian running out of her law office across the street with her taser, and Coral was at my side with a long, skinny knife I was pretty sure she’d just used on Junior, and Poppy came out of the shop with Ozzie’s shotgun, which was a nice gesture but useless since I’d taken the shells out a long time ago. Still she looked impressive and her aim was good as she zeroed in on Junior.

“Pike’s on his way!” Lian yelled, and I looked at Junior.

“Pike’s the local law, and you hit me in front of witnesses,” I said to him. “Plus my friends are armed and dangerous. I’d leave if I were you.”

Junior ignored me, staring at the new guy who stared back. I would have said it was a “Make my day” moment except the new guy looked like he didn’t give a damn. I could tell Junior was trying to make a decision, but before he could, a darkened window in the rear of a large Mercedes SUV across the street powered down and a woman’s low voice called out. “Oswald Junior! Enough.”

Junior said, “I’ll be back for what’s mine,” and walked to the SUV. He opened the passenger door and got in, and it was moving before he shut the door.

Lian reached us, breathless, taser at the ready. “I saw what happened. Are you okay, Rose?”

“Yes.” I said, ignoring my throbbing cheek as I watched the big, dark Mercedes roll down State Street. We didn’t get a lot of vehicles like that in Rocky Start. “Did you really call Pike?”

“Yes. As soon as I saw that guy hit you, I yelled ‘Oddities!’ into the phone and grabbed my taser.” Lian looked at the good guy. “And you are?”

“Just passing through.” He picked up his backpack, shrugging it on with one practiced movement, and motioned to his big black dog. “You ladies have a nice day.”

“Wait!” Poppy called and came down the steps with her shotgun. “Your dog—”

“Wait a minute,” I said at the same time, feeling guilty now. The guy had helped and I’d snapped at him, the least I could do was . . . something. Offer him a drink? Lasagna? My body?

Okay, that last one was Coral’s fault.

But he really was sort of attractive, if you liked serious, dusty, underfed, expressionless, middle-aged men with cheekbones and an overwhelming aura of gravity and menace who rescued you.

He shook his head at Poppy, nodded to me, and walked away with his dog down State Street, the same route the Mercedes had taken, his back straight, and his stride strong, except for a slight limp in one leg.

“Stripes,” Poppy said.

That’s the family code for danger. I used to panic all the time and Ozzie would say, “Rose, if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Unless you see stripes. Then come get me.” So our code for danger has always been stripes. Except now we couldn’t get Ozzie. Damn it.

“He seemed nice,” I said to Poppy. “No stripes.” Well, not a lot of stripes.

“That dog hasn’t been brushed in months,” Poppy said severely. “That’s neglect.” She handed me the shotgun and started down the street after the guy and his dog.

This was all wrong. Ozzie dies, Coral shows up looking like Elvira Queen of the Night, an asshole in a big Mercedes tries to take my home, and then a stranger with a wolf shows up just in time to protect me while fulfilling Coral’s fantasies?

No. Poppy was right, we were looking at stripes.

“What the hell is going on?” Lian asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking down the street after the stranger. “But I don’t like any of it.” Except maybe him.
Except I have terrible taste in men, so not him.

I looked around for Coral, but she’d disappeared, which was not like her, in the midst of drama. Coral loved drama.
“You know,” Lian said, watching the stranger, “that guy was attractive in an experienced Johnny Cash man-in-black kind of way.”
“He didn’t look anything at all like Johnny Cash.” Springsteen, maybe.

“No, the vibe,” Lian was saying. “Like he had been interesting places and done dangerous things. I find that very hot.”

“Then stop dating younger men.”

Lian waved that away. “What are you going to do now?”

I gave it about two seconds’ thought. “Go after Poppy so she doesn’t annoy the good guy about his dog. Lift his wallet to find out who he is and why he was in town just in time to interfere with Junior because two strangers here in the same ten minutes is suspicious. Put the lasagna in the oven so we have dinner tonight.” I looked at Lian. “Thank you for coming to tase the enemy. You are a good, true friend.”

“Here.” She handed me the taser. “In case a stranger gets ugly again. The good guy was not ugly, but if he catches you in mid-lift of his wallet, that might change.” She looked off down the street. “No, he still wouldn’t be ugly.”

“He’s too old for you,” I said and went to put the shotgun inside so I could go hunt zebras.