For those curious about the stuff writers sometimes throw away.

[demiurgent]

Here's a chunk of writing -- 1,200 words or so. I think it's actually kind of okay, all told. Certainly it isn't bad -- well, if we ignore some cumbersome grammar I'd clean up in edits. Instead, it's all been cheerfully excised from the story it was in the middle of.

Said story's concept is simple enough. A reporter for a Rolling Stone knockoff goes to write a Rolling Stone style story interviewing a relatively minor supervillain.

This chunk of writing was fun and evocative and has a pretty girl undressing, and looking at it in the context of the story, it's entirely extraneous and therefore it's gone, and you get to read it here because... I feel like it.

It's moderately NSFW, and entirely "all rights reserved" and the like. Enjoy if you want.

***

The important thing to remember is Leather didn't get angry at me. She wrecked my car, broke my cell phone, cut me off from the world and effectively took me prisoner to prove a point: I was in her world, and she was in charge, and I didn't get a say. A few days later, she'd laugh it all off. "Look," she'd say that night. "What good is being a bad guy if you're going to be reasonable. In my own home, I'm God-king. You needed to have that explained to you."

On the day she threw me, however, I didn't know that. I was pretty freaked out. She brought me back downstairs, to the third floor. As it turns out her personal rooms were on the third floor -- a little suite she'd made out of the ex-power station's offices, piled high with eclectic furniture which was occasionally punctuated by state of the art electronics. It seems being a super villain meant having the nicest CD player on the market.

"You're going to stay here," she said, pointing me to a back room on that same floor. There was a comfortable looking futon in there, as well as a television. The blankets were ratty, but soft and clean. That was one thing -- Leather had a bunch of old crap, but she kept it clean.

"How do I know you're going to let me go?" I asked. Maybe I don't learn so well.

"You don't," she said. "But it'd be pretty silly to spend a week being interviewed by you if I'm just going to kill you at the end of it, right?"

"Have you ever killed anyone?" I asked.

"Hey, the night's young, isn't it?" Which I noticed wasn't an answer, but I didn't push it. I'd done some research before coming up, and I knew she wasn't wanted for murder by any authority I'd been able to find. On the other hand, the image of a really hard looking ground was still fresh in my mind.

"Bathroom's through there," she said, pointing in another direction."

"You want me crossing through your room to go to the bathroom?"

"Hey, I have faith you won't do anything stupid. I have a kitchenette in past there, too."

"You have a full kitchen two flights down."

"Yeah, but I lock the stairwell door at night, and it's a pain in the ass to unlock it every time I get hungry. And since you're a prisoner anyway, I'm not about to let you wander around downstairs in the middle of the night, am I?"

I allowed as to her point. It was weird, though. Not ten minutes before that she was wrecking the most expensive thing I owned and threatening to let me fall to a pretty poorly attended funeral, and now we were chatting like I was crashing at her place for a slumber party.

And maybe I was. I'm not really the sort to dwell, anyhow. And since there was nothing I could do about my car or my situation, I just got over it.

"Give me your sizes tonight, by the way," she said, turning and peeling her shirt off. She wasn't wearing a bra. She didn't have any tattoos on her back, though I could clearly see the devil girl on her arm now. Which registered before the fact that she was walking around topless. Of course, I was only seeing her back. "When we go out tonight, we'll be sure to bring you back a few changes."

"Right," I said. "Going out?" I didn't turn away. Maybe I should have but I didn't. Instead, I watched the muscles play over her back as she opened up her dresser and started looking through it.

"Yeah," she said. "going to do a run. Jewelry store. Nothing too upscale, mind -- we're talking 'A Diamond is Forever,' not million dollar hits on antiques."

"I thought you didn't do the crime thing near where you lived."

"Normally, I don't. But I'm moving at the end of the week. So, that means that for this week, I've effectively toured to Meridian City." She looked over her shoulder. "I'd hate to leave this place without putting my mark on it."

"Gotcha."

She chuckled, turning her head back to the drawer. She pulled out a grey sports bra and pulled it on. "That's the thing about your 'home base' city? On the one hand, you don't shit where you sleep, right? But at the same time, walking around day after day in downtown, you see all this stuff you'd like to just steal. You know?"

"And now you're going to steal it?" I asked.

"Damn right." She skinned out of the flannel pants. Her underwear was white cotton with little pink flowers on it. I remember feeling really weird about that. This girl was wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for multiple counts of grand theft larceny, trafficking in stolen goods across state lines, property destruction -- a laundry list of crime. But her panties were cute.

"There's a couple of heroes in town," I said. "Transit fought Iron John here last month -- put him in prison. And we see quite a bit of Darkhood."

"Transit's on the west coast for the next week," Leather said, skinning out of the panties and pulling on a black sport thong. "She's at some physics conference." She scooped a black leotard out of the next drawer down, and began pulling it on. It was 'wet look' spandex. Almost glossy. I realized she was putting on a costume.

"What about Darkhood?"

Leather grinned, turning to face me. "Oh, like I can't take some guy in an SCA costume with a bow." The leotard clung, like it was soaking wet, and I have to admit it looked like leather or PVC on her, even though I know it wasn't. The front had eyehooks and laces.

"That guy with a bow puts a lot of people away."

Leather rolled her eyes, stepping around me to grab a pair of leather boots from the side of her bed. "You don't get it. I'm a villain. He's a hero. Of course we're going to fight. If you don't want to fight super heroes, find some other way to make a living."

"So why wait for Transit to be out of town?"

"Because she's second tier. He's third. I'm not quite to second tier yet."

I paused. "Second tier?"

Leather grinned, tying the boot. "You'll understand, soon enough."

Comments

[david-wisdom.livejournal.com]

I like it. The "slice of abnormal life" is cool; it handily shows how Leather (like, presumably, her "colleagues") just doesn't look at life the way non-capes do.

The in-character mention of "tiers" is a nice touch, as well.

[ericfmyers.livejournal.com]

I like it so far. It needs one of those magazine intros. When you finish it, you should lay it out all Music mag style with blurbs and illustrations sprinkled through it.

[kjc007.livejournal.com]

This is really quite good. Very intriguing. Where will the final story go when it's done?

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

I'll start with the high end markets -- the tone of this one might be one of those "one in ten thousand" that Playboy likes, for example, and there's always the trifecta of SF (F&SF, Analog, Asimov's -- though I'll have to language revise for them).

Beyond that, it's our old friend "whoever will print the damn thing."

[iceberg-blog.livejournal.com]

This shows promise. I like how you can see the 3 dimensionality of the world it's set in without being overwhelmed by an info dump or six.

Well done!

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

The difference between you and most other writers I know is that the stuff you throw away is better than most of what they keep.

I include myself in the "writers I know" category.

Re: Well done!

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not that I thought this was bad. It's that it served no purpose in the story, except to add 1,200 words. In a story like this one, every scene has to do two things -- convey the sense of overall style (the 'slice of life of a supervillain' bit), and move the actual story plot along in some way. This ended up failing the second. What plot movement was here could be said in passing in other scenes that did the two functional pieces more effectively.

The hardest skill I've ever had to learn is learning to cut stuff that didn't suck but that also didn't help.

[roniliquidity.livejournal.com]

Fantastic!

I'm actively disappointed that there's not more to read.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Well, with luck someone will buy the story, and then you can read it. ;)