A little anarchy never hurt anyone...much...

Worked all day, and I do mean until 8:30pm, so no chance to do anything with CK. Not even thinking...

...Except, I really have settled in on the idea that I want this story to keep from falling into the usual moralistic crap that pollutes so many films and books. The Hero does some bad things but is really good and redeemed in the end. Sometimes they're also punished. And this piece is not that way.

Neither is it nihilistic (well, maybe a little) or fatalistic (not in the least). It's a story of justice served because justice refused to serve. That's all. And even the innocent aren't completely, but still are. For example, Zeke is the most decent guy in the story, but he has no problem working with a gang of drug dealers and helping them hide their money. His attitude is, there wouldn't be a drugs problem without a market for it, and alcohol is just as destructive but it's legal. No time for the hypocrisy.

Besides the guys he works with are his friends, and all he has, aside from his dog, Loki, and occasional trips to a whorehouse in Scottsdale. Rhonda, the cantina's waitress who has a thing for Zeke, isn't as involved but still hardly innocent...and gets pissy when he rejects her. Of course, there's an honest deputy, Reymon, who likes Rhonda and is on the ball...but he's in the background for much of it all.

It's funny I'm having so much trouble with this little story. A Place of Safety worked its through-line out so neatly. Brendan from the age of ten to twenty-five, going from a too-aware innocent to a man trapped in his fate. It's like he knew all the beats and showed them to me, without working up an outline until I'd all but written the first draft. It fell into place in so many ways. Of course, I couldn't see them, at the time, and now can't see how they could have been any other way.

I do need to make Carli's Kills come to an acceptable end, and I think that's what's making me nuts. I may dump Zeke's Viking stuff. That used to lead up to him getting killed saving her life and Carli giving him a Viking funeral by burning down the cantina...then going off to suffer her punishment at having brought about the death of the man she loved.

Gag. No wonder it wouldn't sell. It's pseudo-tragic nonsense out of a bodice-ripping romance novel.