...Why I Should Eat a Handful Quite Regularly... I woke up at four a.m. this morning and thought, “Hmmm, if I’m not sleepy why not have some fun?”
Giving my peacefully sleeping partner a rare break, I slipped out of bed and decided fun in this instance was planning the menu for a dinner party/game night/sleepover shindig I’m having this weekend. Absorbingly engrossing as menus and grocery lists are; my mind wandered to the comments flying back and forth on my Amazon page over the last couple days. A Date with Fate recently received a two -star and then one-star review. Both reviews promoted some lively, unexpected discussions in the comments section due to the POV’s of three reviewers.
One of the results of this flurry was to make me think about the words used to describe books, what the terms mean to different people, and why they are necessary as guideposts for story choices for some readers.
Take the word TRILOGY, for example.
It was vexing me to contemplate I may be forced to write one of these triangular tales against my weak will. I don’t much like the word trilogy from an aesthetic viewpoint, nor do I much like odd numbers; they’re bullies. Odd numbers remind me of two women sharing a “WTF?” look over what the third is saying, even thought the third can plainly see the two doing this and thinks, “Well, that wasn’t very nice!” The third then texts their fourth, who couldn’t be there, that the two “WTFer’s” are acting like a couple of mean B’s. It is never a win/win with the odd numbers. Nor do I like the inferred concept in trilogies of beginning-middle-end. The books too often reflect this sequential formula in the contents of what is written. They came, and they napped, and they left.
I like the even numbers—they’re exciting and energetic! “Hello, what do you say the two of us get together for dinner and you can buy breakfast?” or “Hey, the four of us should go downtown and cause some trouble!” or “Let’s round up sixty people and rent a castle with dungeons to play Hide ‘n Seek in the dark for a week!”
The one bad thing about even numbers is poor, pitiful number eight. I could strangle “OctopussyMom” and “Ass and Kate plus 8”, or going wayyy back, “My God, Eight is Enough, all ready!” for ruining a perfectly good even number. I also decided, as I looked over my herbs and spices on hand for cooking, I enjoy parallel lines and rectangles, or the best yet, the beautiful SQUARE.
Remember the game Four Square? The game Four Square has to be the best playground game ever invented on the planet. (Other than the game I invented from necessity when obsessed with playing Four Square. My game was played behind the building at the park where we played Four Square. It required some finesse. The object was to get the malingering boys off their butts and in line to play. It went something like, Tracy says, “You show me yours now, and if you can beat me at Four Square, that girl over there will show you hers later.” The Malingerer, being a natural show-off, promptly agrees. The finesse part was making sure I didn’t lose, or that I could run faster than any Malingerer or Girls Over There.) It’s always a win/win with the even numbers.
So, that was one E-normous problem resolved in my life by 4:04 AM on the microwave clock this happy day in November. I am left with no logical choice but to ditch the Trilogy of Terror idea and make “The Adventures of Anabel Axelrod” an ongoing two, four, or sixty-volume saga.
The HEA part is going to be a more difficult problem. I’ll have to ponder longer over a café au lait. Unless, (a snap of the fingers), I change the very root meaning of the acronym! Happily-Ever-After is now to be officially known as Happily-Enjoying-Anabel.
“Hmmm, I wonder if that is considered pulling a fast one...”
I might have to take that idea behind the castle for some finessing.