Wow…I really just tried to write July for the date! I will not be joining next week because I will be on a mini getaway with my boyfriend. I so need it. I’m only getting one day off for about 6 weeks straight. Feel free to come kidnap me! So long as fun things happen after the initial kidnapping and I’m not allowed home or near a computer.
Since I haven’t had much time to write, due to work and work and school, I’ll be giving you the next few lines from what I shared last week. I did cheat a bit as this will be my NaNoWriMo piece, but I’ll definitely hit more than 50k words in the one month, so I think I’m safe.
Here’s how WIPpet works. Take an excerpt from your current Work In Progress and post it in a blog. The excerpt must in some way related to the date. And feel free to get VERY creative with the math. Then share that blog with everyone else here and read all the other amazing posts!!
Here’s mine for this week. Taking off from last week, which you can find here, Grace continues to deal with the punk. I have 25 paragraphs (they’re short I promise). My math is this: 10 + 9 +2 + 1 +3 = 25
Climbing up and onto his back, she dug her knee into his spine and grasped for his hand, the knife blade flying out. Pulling her fingers into a fist, she smashed it down onto his wrist until he let go and cried out.
“Get off me, bitch!”
“Stop resisting!” Grace shouted back, seeing red as the punk tried to wiggle his way loose from under her.
She moved up his body and rested her forearm against the back of his neck, working his face into the gravel. He cried out in pain, but Grace didn’t let up. She wouldn’t until his body completely relaxed and he decided to cooperate.
“Stop resisting, and I’ll let you up.”
Swallowing hard, Grace looked up to see Toulouse barreling his way down the street to her location. He had left his cruiser at the end of the block, driver’s side door flung open as he ran as fast as he could down the road.
Grace looked back down at her suspect and sneered as he tried to turn her over. She dug her knee farther into his back and put more pressure on his neck.
“A’ight. A’ight. Damn, bitch. I give up.”
Toulouse got to her and landed on the other side of the suspect. Toulouse grabbed for the suspects arm and wrenched it behind his back and pressed his own knee into the man’s back. Grace reached up and twisted the punks other arm back and watched as Toulouse clicked the handcuffs into place.
Grace let out a breath just as another cruiser pulled up. Two doors slammed and Grace knew who was walking over before she had a chance to even look up. The stupid cop that wouldn’t let up on her and his kid of a trainee. She took a deep breath and bolstered herself for any rude comments, sexual or personal, and started to tug the punk up by his cuffs.
“Got it all handled, Halling?”
If he hadn’t been facing her, Grace would have sneered. “Yes, it’s all handed. Thanks for the assist.”
She turned back to Toulouse and headed toward his cruiser to do the pat down. She knew the three men were giving each other nasty looks behind her back due to their silence, but she ignored them and kept on walking with the punk in front of her.
“You fucking tackled me! I’m gonna report this to your sup. Excessive force is what it is.”
“Shut up,” Grace muttered.
She shoved him against the back of the cruiser and spun him around. She patted down his arms and sides, deciding to wait for Toulouse to come back over for the rest of the pat down. A quick glance over her shoulder told her that he was already coming back.
“Got any needles on you? Anything sharp that’s going to poke me?”
The punk spit on the ground and growled. “None of your business.”
He pursed his lips and lifted his chin. Grace rolled her eyes and tugged on his cuffs to make her point. She didn’t want to get pricked if she could help it, and she was sure Toulouse would agree.
“It’s only going to be harder on you if you don’t cooperate.”
The punk didn’t respond.
“What we got, Halling?”
“Nothing yet. I only did the top half of the pat down, figured you could do the rest. You know, that whole man to man thing.” Grace smirked and stepped back when Toulouse grabbed hold of the handcuffs.
Before Grace could take three steps, an angry black woman came charging down the road, barefoot and braless. Grace immediately stepped between the punk, Toulouse, and the angry woman.
The woman was screaming so loudly with a hoarse and deep voice that Grace couldn’t understand a word she said. Every two steps the woman had to heave a breath as she waddled her large body closer and closer to the punk.
Great extract, really exciting. I like the way Grace is constantly having to stand up for herself with her male colleagues and the punk she’s arresting. And what exactly is the black woman so upset about? You’ve used vivid descriptions too which set the scene well. I’m intrigued and want to know more. 🙂
aww thanks!! She actually didn’t used to feel like she had to stand up for herself. It was until certain events, which happen in book 1, that she feels like this. Which will be explained more in the first few chapters of this book, but this is just the prologue so far.
The black woman? lol she’s the punks mama. =P I can’t wait for that interaction!
I like this scene a lot. Great intensity! I wouldn’t mind a couple more details of the surroundings to get an idea of where they are. Stuff like the gravel you described. And I think I’d like more imagery of what the punk’s mama’s anger looks like. We’re told she’s angry, but is there some way you can show us? In fact, I think the first sentence you have you could cut the part about her being “angry” and perhaps in the second sentence describe her face. Is she baring her teeth? Are her eyes wide and wild? Eyebrows tightly pressed together? Great interactions though!
There will be far more about the punk’s mama. She just got onto the scene and isn’t quite close enough for Grace to see all that goodness yet, but that’s basically what the next paragraph is. The surroundings is interesting. I definitely need to add in a bit more, but I do want to keep the piece moving quickly, so I don’t want too much. I might add it in after the fact once the main part of the scene is over. I don’t know yet. You basically have all that I’ve written on this piece so far. =P
I understand. I’m out of plot for my project currently. I had intended for it to be a shorter story, but it ballooned and now I need to plot the rest. Even then I still need to layer in details and textures to make things pop. Ah, the life of us writers, right? 😉 Our work is never really finished, even when it is.
So true! I can’t look at the book that’s out because I keep wanting to make changes to it.
Plot is not usually something I run out of. The first story for this on I had planned on being a 70k word stand alone novel…guess it’s now at least a trilogy! Eek!
I love your descriptions of the action, it flows so smoothly and reads very well. I’m thinking the punk is going to wish they would have gotten him loaded into the backseat before his mamma showed up. I’m guessing that’s the woman who’s on her way.
Lol oh he is so going to wish that!!!!
Thanks! I’m so glad it flows well.
Ick. Needles in a pat down. *shudder* One cop I knew spent an entire evening afraid he’d been exposed to PCP because of something the perp had in his pocket. It was one of his tenser shifts. It’s a nice touch. You don’t hear much about the risks of patting people down. 🙂
Yeah. I was tempted to make the punk swallow something and have Grace pull it out of his mouth but lll save that for later in the story. =P
Oh! And we’ll miss you. Enjoy your itsy bitsy vacation. I’d be happy to kidnap you. Let me check with my ninjas… … … *exasperated sigh* They say they won’t do anymore kidnappings for me until I give them raises. Sorry. If I give into their union one more time, I won’t have enough left after paying my minions to keep my secret lair running.
Rofl!!!!!
Nice scene, lots of action! Ditto Jae that some more setting details would be nice.
Good luck with Nano!
Thanks!
Good to hear you’re taking a bit of a break, Adrian. Enjoy!
As for the excerpt, I’m with Jae–I want a bit more sensory detail here. Maybe have the punk’s mama yell something that draws Grace’s attention from her irritation with Toulouse and the other men? Maybe she’s dusting off her uniform… or looking over to where she’d taken down the suspect to see if he dropped anything?
Maybe she’s finally noticing that ankle…
It’s got a lot of potential, but …. I want more. I’m selfish that way, I know. 😉
This is only the start of the prologue. There isn’t a lot of description of the street because I want it to focus mostly on the action of the scene. I might add in a few more things in the next part of the prologue, but I tend to focus more on action than description of location, particularly since this is a cop novel and location changes every few seconds. So the only locations that get a great amount of detail are places that come up multiple times.
Go Grace! Exciting and fast paced with lots of underlying tension between Grace and the other male cops, which is great. I always like to get a good sense of location but I get what you mean about it being a cop novel and not wanting to slow the action down.
Enjoy your mini break – well deserved and much needed by the sounds of it!
Thanks!! I’m totally going to enjoy it; were going on a ghost tour!
Great descriptions and tension! I would not want to piss off Grace though after reading how she treated that punk!
Haha so true!!
This is a great extract, I was getting angrier on Grace’s behalf every time the punk opened his mouth.
OMG he definitely has diarrhea of the mouth!