Chemistry minus zero and counting

What do you guys do when your characters have no chemistry? Picture Donna Summers singing, "I need some luke warm stuff baby this evening..." You can't poke em, you can't prod em, and just like real people you can't make them spark unless they just seem to want to. I got a couple of characters right now and I swear to you they couldn't care less about each other. But I'm about eighty percent finished with no option of starting over and I can't figure out how to get these two all aboard the love train.

Someone once told me that there's something inherently wrong with the story when the characters just aren't making that love connection but I don't have time for all over fixes so do you think gratuitous sex might do the trick? The principle being the more they make it the more they like it. I think it works for real men, why not fictional ones?

Actually, I think that what it really comes down to is that I don't have chemistry with these characters so how can they have chemistry with each other? What I need to do is have a love fest with these two until we are all so happy to be alive, even if it's just on paper, that we're all ready to have a fictional menge a troix. (Or however the heck those wacky French spell that.) Then I'll be ready to crank this baby out like I would any other baby. Painful and bloody and something that I'll probably live to regret later.

Song of the day--Hot Stuff, Donna Summers. I need some hot love baby tonight.

Quote of the day--Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.
---Billy Crystal



Amber

Lingering darkness

It occurred to me about five minutes ago what today is. I knew of course, we talked about it yesterday. But I had forgotten. I am about to say some things that are not according to the liking of some people so if you would rather read about writing than good old fashioned patriotic politics I encourage you to move on to the next blog.

On September 11, 2001 the hardest hit emotionally, in my opinion, were the families of victims, those who lived where the attacks happened and then those in the United States military. My family fell, and still does fall, into the latter group. My son was six months old at the time and had been up all night teething. As a great lover of a murder mystery I got up every morning and watched the news of an unsolved one, forgive me if I've completely forgotten who it was, by turning on CNN. But that morning I was late waking up and late getting to the television.

Before I could the phone rang. It was my best friend of many, many years and she was crying. We live apart, closer now but at the time we were stationed at an unfamiliar base with only periodic calls from home. She said, "Did you hear?" I thought someone had died. Someone I knew and loved. But in the end it turned out to be many someone's who I came to love.

I hung up the phone and approached my husband, a soldier who had been given permission to come in late because he'd been in late the night before and twelve hours between shifts was a requirement. He was in the shower. I spoke through the curtain. "Some terrorists just flew commercial planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." There was a long silence and then he summed it up in his man way, "Well, that's just great." He meant it in a sarcastic way but he spoke from deep inside as all inherently patriotic people did. He was already scarred.

Within minutes he was on Alpha recall and the base was under lock down and months of terror and isolation followed for both the soldiers and their families. My classes at the local community college, staffed and attended by mostly active duty members and their dependents, were canceled. I was not allowed to leave my house without an express purpose. The first time I tried to take my little boy for a walk we were stopped by a handful of men in a Hummer armed with machine guns who informed me that I needed to go home if I had no specific destination in mind. I was not allowed to wander. The base went under lockdown at dark and we were not permitted to leave or return through those heavily guarded gates. We were prisoners in our own homes while our husbands plotted their response to the actions of terrorists.

Now it has been six years and many things have changed in the world and most things have changed in the military world as a result of those dark days and have never returned to the status quo. And now I venture into a place where I am bound to piss some people off.

I think the war is right. I think it is necessary and I think it would be madness to pull the troops out now.

Those who are opposed consist mostly of people who do not understand. The troops don't need your protection. By now everyone in the military has either enlisted or reenlisted since the start of the war against terror. Believe me when I tell you that these people know what they were getting into. Supporting the troops by pulling them out when they believe with all their hearts they fight the good fight is no support at all. There are, no doubt, the few dissenters but the lingering darkness of that September day has colored the hearts of these men and women and they know in their souls the direction of their duty.

Nobody wants to fight. Nobody wants to kill and nobody wants to die.

But somebody has to. Aren't you glad they are there to protect your right to complain about them protecting your rights to complain. What a great country and what a great bunch of people. We are all so lucky. I miss my husband when he is gone and the presence of an autistic child makes deployment all that much harder. And when he steps into Iraq for those long deployments my natural worry is magnified to levels that incapacitate me but sometimes sacrifice is so necessary to do the right thing. We can not all live in blissful ignorance. Someone has to protect our God given right to be ignorant.

Song of the day--Lee Greenwood, God Bless the USA.

Quote of the day--Patriotic dissent is a luxury of those protected by better men than they.

A