Okay...another draft done...

Carli's Kills is, once again, run through by my red pen and ready to input...and this time I'm getting feedback on it, once I'm done. I've spent enough time on this book. Trying to decide who lives and dies in it. How it should come together. Why it has to follow a certain path. All of the attendant nonsense, when all I wanted to write was a simple little summer read. Something to keep you occupied as you sunbathed by the pool or beach.

It amazes me I had such trouble with that. My plan to have this as non-moralistic and anti-puritanical as possible seems to have riled up all my inner being. I thought the Presbyterian in me was long dormant, but I guess it ain't. I had to all but beat it back with a paddle. It's still snarling at me...and it seems to be working its demands on my writer's psyche...but my characters are happy with this and I see no reason to change it into one where punishment prevails.

I did that in the script, had Carli punished and need to atone for her sins, and visually it would have been a beautiful catharsis. Zeke dies saving Carli and, in honor of his innocence, she gives him a form of the Viking burial he wanted while Romanza, the melody he picks out on his guitar, plays over it.

I pictured it so beautifully. Her not shedding a tear as she washes the blood from his face and tenderly arranges him on the table. Then lays wood under it, pours Tequila over the wood and sets the fire. Stands back to watch it catch and grow and consume Zeke's body. Beautiful and stoic in the flickering light.

Then she sees the police are arriving to back up the sheriff (since Carli has killed several people). She smiles and goes behind the bar and takes a box of bullets (established earlier) and drops them around the Cantina, all in time to the second bridge of the melody before splashing more Tequila everywhere.

With a last look at Zeke's pyre, she sneaks out through an underground cave (also established earlier) as the flames race up to the bullets...and the moment the music ends, they start to explode, making the cops think someone's firing at them from within.

I was happy with it. Proud. But it plays flat and condescending when you can only do it with words and not images and sounds and nicely paced editing. And seemed indulgent...so I changed it.

But still...guess I'll always be a film freak, at heart.