3. 55 am, Lincoln Crisler's house. A few beers on the table (OK, more than a few. You can't actually see there's a table.)
- So how do you see us four working on that thing, Lincoln?
- Well, Tim, I pictured each of us would write their own piece. One for each state of life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. And everytime, a character, an underdog, going through hell and back. Or not... But with a vengeance.
- Kind of a sphinx riddle going on here: which creature walks on four legs in the morning, ...
- Keep working on that, Ed. Might lead us to the title... And I thought it would be nice too if each story crossed two or more genres, so readers would lose their bearings and not see anything coming.
- Guys, I've got an awesome childhood story all figured out: a good ol' sad and lonely background à la Toni Morrisson, deep, dark and scary as a New Orleans voodoo thang. But all spiced up with some steampunk... Kids left to fight for themselves, only this time they get deadly piston arms and legs to do it!
- Pretty neat, Malon! I know Toni's Nobel Prize material and everything, but she'd have to put more of that exciting stuff in her books to get me to read one...
- And I'll be able to show my feminine side: I want to have a young girl as my hero. And give her special powers. And confront her with the most hellish creatures ever. And...
- Pervert. Though I'd like to tackle things from a feminine angle too. I've always wanted to have a female character going through some kind of mid-life crisis. It'll look like some ordinary yarn at first, Desperate Housewives stuff, only it will quickly get to look more like the X-Files.
- That sounds cool, Lincoln. If you let me have the adolescence bit, I'll plunge a young hood into another type of hell, a descent into the maelstrom of gangster wars, drugs and guns and no escape... Something gritty and realistic in tone, Hubert Selby Jr's Willow Tree type of thing.
- I've always thought you had your ear to the street, and captured the lingo well enough to pull it off without your dialogues sounding corny. You're one of the few who can do it, Ed, up there with the likes of Selby and Tom Wolfe.
- Wow, Malon, you've just kindled my Bonfire of Vanities for a lifetime... Will you marry me?
- Guys, get a room. We're in the middle of something, here.
- Chill out, Lincoln! As I was saying, just when you think my main character's hit rock bottom, he'll continue to fall, deeper and deeper. It's going to be really rough. I want my readers to go all "Ow, no, this can't be happening, he can't do that...!"
- With a supernatural twist?
- Is there any other way?
- Good, so that's settled. Now it's up to the Exquisite Marquis... Mr Marquitz, what's old age got in store for us?
- How should I know? Death, I guess... I wonder what it's like to be nearing the end, what you think, how you feel. Even worse, to have outlived everyone else in your family, your wife, children and grandchildren, leaving you, in a perverted irony, alive but alone. My character's going to be haunted by death in every way, then. A strange encounter leads him to dig up the past, and not only that. As in you guys' stories, here's another poor soul who's gonna have to make a "life-changing" choice.
- Well, seems to me like our new baby's under way, then. We only need to find it a fitting name now...
- Hey guys, check it out: it's four in the morning.
- Guess you've got our title, Ed.
