Well, I certainly haven't been over here in a while. Let's just say this hasn't been the year for feeling good enough about myself to share my writing, and leave it at that. However, this morning I decided to take the plunge. Here is the new opening for the Djinnocide rewrite I'm working on. I hope you enjoy it, because other than a few tweaks, I ain't changing it again. =op
No one ever asked me if I wanted to be a genie. I never even thought such a thing was possible. I was a modern woman living in the Roaring Twenties. Against my mother’s wishes, I wore my hair and my skirts short. I drank at speakeasies. I danced with gangsters. Hell, I even smoked cigarettes for petesakes. After surviving for two whole decades, I was certainly too old to believe in fairy stories anymore.
My father, Reggie, he was the dreamer in the family. He was the one always looking for the next big wish and if he could steal it? Well, that was even better. Me, I spent decades looking for the next big party. In fact, I had been prepping for my own birthday extravaganza when the package arrived. The shipping label said ‘Constantinople’, but whether my thief of a dad was still there was anyone’s guess. Odds were even he’d moved on to the next port of call and his next score. At least he’d bothered to think of me enough to send a gift. After all, it’s not every day a gal turns twenty.
“Marriageable age,” my mother had mumbled at me that morning in lieu of a more sentimental greeting. She’d meant ‘well past the age of finding a husband’ if her previous birthday wishes were any indication. She’d wanted me married and out of the house before I could even graduate high school. To Evangeline’s way of thinking, I should’ve had at least three babies she could bounce on her alcoholic knee by the time I reached this age.
I didn’t care about her wishes. Lucky for me neither did Reggie. As he often told his dear wife, “Josephine Eugenia Mayweather will marry when she damned well pleases”. I mentally amended that to add ‘if ever’.
And if the gifts he sent from abroad were any indication, I would have no problems in life by joining the family business. How hard could stealing really be? Reggie didn’t seem too taxed by it when he came home on his infrequent visits. In his words, he only had the law to worry about and they hadn’t nabbed him yet.
Prison didn’t scare me. Not then. I was young. I was invincible. And I planned to tell Reggie that I was his new partner, as soon as possible. If he couldn’t come home for my birthday, I would go to him. I would demand my place in his life and he would teach me how to relieve the world of its monetary burdens.
I was an adult. I would do as I damn well pleased. In fact, as soon as my party had wrapped up, I planned on telling Evangeline that her daughter was finally out of her hair. I’d board a tramp steamer before the month was finished.
But first, I had a package to open.
....
Thanks for reading along. Hopefully it whets your appetite for more. And if not, remember the old maxim: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Or rather, if you leave a rude comment, I'll moderate it into a black hole anyway. So there. =op
