Subdivisions

An overhead shot of a neighborhood of tract housing, with all houses spaced close together.

Justice had spent Saturday strolling around her lovely new neighborhood, marveling at the luscious lawns and tree-lined streets.

She had been walking on a concrete sidewalk in the shade of old trees. She could reach out and touch the feathery pink tufts of a mimosa tree. She could drag her fingertips across landscaping bricks. A soft breeze lifted her short curls and she could smell flowers and barbecuing and chlorine instead of cow shit. She could hear motorcycles and cars, screeching and splashing, lawn mowers and sprinklers.

She lived in a subdivision now. She felt something welling in her chest she couldn’t identify. It was almost too good to be true, but this wasn’t surreal like graduating from school to half-million-Monopoly-dollar job offers. It was normal, living here. ordinary. Like the new clothes that fit well and flattered her and lifted her out of the realm of poor country girl. Their plainness, this ordinariness was a gift Knox didn’t know he’d given her.

When she came upon the clubhouse with the pool and the attendant asked for her address, then gave her a pass to the gate, she found herself choking up. “Thank you,” she whispered, looking down at it.

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The core of genre romance

For every woman who’s made a fool of a man, there’s a woman who’s made a man of a fool. —Samuel Hoffman (near as I can tell)

I read this quote long, long ago, and I swear to high heaven it was in one book of Anne Rice’s vampire trilogy (maybe Queen of the Damned?).

It resonated with me then and it still does, and I finally figured out why.

This sentiment is the heart and soul of genre romance: What woman doesn’t like to think she has that much power in either direction?

Stuff tacked to my office wall, part 1

On power:

You have to come to it on your own, through hardship and fear. You have to know who you are and what you believe and you have to take stock of that every day. You have to walk barefoot through fire on broken glass. You have to stand up to people who frighten you under conditions that terrify you. You have to be honest with yourself about what you really want. You have to be willing to fail.

Power is acquired, earned. You’ll have many opportunities in your life to earn bits and pieces of it. You’ll make bad choices; learn from them and do the best you can with them. Do not, under any circumstances, dither over what the right choice might be every single time you’re presented with one. It won’t teach you anything and you’ll be a bore at cocktail parties.

Acquiring power is a never-ending process. Every day you have to wake up and prove to the world all over again that you deserve it. There should never come a day when you wake up and say, ‘Okay, I’m powerful now; I’m done.’ Never.

—Giselle to Justice, The Proviso