That's Deep--Real Deep

So, this is NOT a post about my OCD.  I know.  Weird, isn't it?  I've been working from lists all week and I'm not sure if it's the illusion of control or actual control, but I feel like I'm doing better, and I'm definitely accomplishing more.  There is the possibility that lists might become an obsession themselves, but I hope not.

So, while I'm waiting on various editing notes from various sources, I'm working on revision of Good Girls Don't Date Mutants--which I originally wrote nearly three years ago.  It's gone through many, many revisions already.  It had some plot issues--a major plot issue in fact--it had stalking that was just a smidge less severe than Twilight's.  It gained and lost a point of view.  The chapters have gotten smaller and more numerous--which I don't like--and I'm fixing. It's gained epistolary inserts between chapters--which I really like--but I wouldn't be surprised if they get discarded as being too cute or something.

This manuscript started out life in third person--just third person for the most part.  Then, I switched it to first person.  Now, I'm switching it to third person deep.  Typically this would seem like a frustrating set of changes--to switch it back to the original point-of-view makes you just want to shake the characters and ask them why you changed in it the first place.  On the other hand, third person deep will still retain some of the inner dialogue from first person, so it's helped the story evolve. Wanna see?  You know you do...

Okay, this is from Lucas's POV.  This story is set in contemporary society but there are a secret group of mutants living among us.  Lucas is a member of the Strain--his genetics give him super-human powers, and he thrives on bacteria--the same bacteria that would kill "Outsiders" i.e. the rest of the world.  He's studying botulism in his lab.  Botulism is the Strain's version of a narcotic.  His mother is a sociopath and an assassin... and GO:

First, flat third person:

“Hello, my lovely,” his mother said while breezing in.  “What are we studying today, Lucas?”

“Botulism,” Lucas said.

“How delightful… are we studying or partaking?” she asked, sliding onto a stool beside him.

He glared at her… which made her laugh.

Second, its trip through first person where it picked up all the character's thoughts. 

“Hello, my lovely,” my mother said, breezing in.  “What are we studying today, Lucas?”

Damn.  If only I’d put this away and been working on something else.  Prevarication was out—she’d know.

“Botulism,” I said.

“How delightful!  Are we studying or partaking?”  She slid onto a stool beside me.

I glared at her—which made her laugh.  This wasn’t unusual.  She often found my serious nature amusing.


Finally, here we are in third person deep:

“What are we studying today, Lucas?”  His mother stepped up to his microscope and peered in.

Damn.  If only he’d put this away and been working on something else.  Prevarication was out—she’d know.

“Botulism.”

“How delightful!  Are we studying or partaking?”  She slid onto a stool beside him.

Lucas glared at her—which made her laugh.  This wasn’t unusual.  She often found his serious nature amusing.

Another thing that this--rather laborious method of arrival added was that Hallie has a southern accent and during the first person conversion I added accent and voice to her character. Much of that will stay in third person deep.  On the one hand, I might rather sell my soul than switch something from third person to first person and then back again just to gain insight into the characters' thoughts, but I can't argue with the resulting nuances it's added.

Still, don't do it.  It's a misery.

If you have other questions on third person deep--and I have--I asked a bunch on Twitter two nights back actually after I read this post by Liz Pelletier: Demystifying Deep POV Liz is the publisher and lead editor at Entangled Publishing.  That post is really helpful.  She and I exchanged several tweets on whether Hallie should keep her slang in the narrative portions of the story. This post: What is Deep POV on the The Editor's Blog is also useful.

Yay or nay. Yeah or nah. Oui or Non. It's done.

So, I took Sentinel's Run from a level zero to a level... five... with seven being the highest. (Because I like seven... that's why... so shut up.)

The continuity errors gave me fits at first, and I wanted to weep, but I made it through those via lots and lots of Mountain Dew and late nights.

Then, came the voice revision... and you know from previous blog posts that voice is king in my world. A book can have all kinds of problems, but if the voice is good... that saves everything. If I can hear their voice in my head, it's perfect and wonderful and I love it.

I wasn't hearing it on Sentinel's Run... not completely. The world was good. The plot is awesome... it has a lot more action, and it's tighter than my other stories. I might do chapter summaries from now on when I'm preparing to work on a book. But the voice wasn't as obvious as in other books I've recently finished.

Voice is king.

Then, over the weekend, I stumbled across the perfect fix for the voice, and everything fell into place. Usually, that's the way of it--when the voice works, I hear birds and see magic, and I just want to run out into the streets and scream in relief. That's how this was.

In other books, once I figured out a few key words that my MC would say... then I knew what they'd say about everything.

In this book, it was all in how Coby responded to questions... did he say "yes" or "okay" or "fine" or "yeah" or what? Was it "no" or "not really" or "nah" or.... When I realized he'd say "yeah" or "nah" and "fine" but never "no" or "yes" and rarely "okay" it all started slipping into place.

Then, I had Mori... who is from an area heavily influenced by French Quebec... and she keeps slipping into French. So, I went through and made sure that she always responded with "oui" or "non" especially when she was under stress, and I watched for those stressful points and added even more French. All week I've had several tabs with French translations and Quebec slang open... right beside sites with farm equipment pictures. I've looked like a cultured hick according to my browsing history.

So, Sentinel's Run is done... and it's well done. I'm really proud of myself. It's not often that I want to hug a manuscript once it's complete, but I want to hug this one. I've sent it off to three betas who'd read the beginning of it last year when I first started it. Then, I suppose I'll let it settle for six months unless Sarah tells me differently. So, I should be revising it the beginning of next year if I can manage it... which is probably when I'll start the second book in the series... if my schedule holds. Looking back, I haven't really kept to my planned schedule at all so far.

Next up, I have a beta read to work on over the next few days, and then I'm burying myself in SECRETS for the rest of the summer. I need to create a more high-stakes version for the film agent. Woo! Violent cowbell!

My muse wants to work on the other WIP that I walked out on last year, My Other Life, so maybe I'll work on that when I'm done with SECRETS or while working on SECRETS. It takes place in Las Vegas so the voices aren't at all the same. It's also in third person... so that might factor into when I can work on it. I don't know. I might create a chapter summary for it just to keep my brain on task. I might do that for SECRETS too.

Well, that's my writerly news.

In non-writerly news, my husband got our Subaru fixed which entailed swapping out the entire engine. It's pretty amazing. It's been out of commission for a while, so it's weird to have another car. He worked on it all weekend and then some. It's so awesome having a husband who can do stuff like that. It feels magical. He's magical. He can fix anything... I'm pretty sure. Everyone should marry useful geeks like him. The world would be a better place... but not him... he's mine... I found him first... get your own.

My kids had a good 4th of July. T is severely spun out from fireworks and hanging out with friends and family. He fell to pieces today at the park when he thought we were out of water for a moment. (My friend had extra water... and it wasn't more than a short walk to get some.) That's how it works with T... the little things add up until he starts falling to pieces over everything. B is doing really well. We got a YMCA membership and we've been taking her to swim at the pool which is perfect for her sensory system. They have a slide, and she goes down the slide over and over and over and over--in a loop.

I'm really, really stressed out. My OCD is so obvious to me that I just want to make excuses for it and say, "I'm sorry... but I have OCD and that's why I'm acting like this." It's probably not all that obvious to those that don't know, but it feels obvious. It's like when the kids were young and would have meltdowns in grocery stores over minor things and I just wanted to shout "They have Autism! They're not bad kids!" I just want to shout, "I have OCD... I swear I'm not psycho... but can you NOT keep repeating yourself or I'll be forced to kill you! Also, your kid isn't being safe! Go stop them from doing that, or I'll be yanking them off the slide while screaming and shouting and ranting... okay? Okay... good. We're clear that I'm not psycho, though, right?" It's so severe that I can't sleep. I stare at the ceiling for an hour or two or three while my brain obsesses over one thing or the other. Finally, exhaustion is knocking me down at three or four in the morning before T stares me awake at eight a.m. (He has got to learn a better way to wake me up... the staring is so creepy.)

Okay, so that was a long update.

So, how is your summer going? *hugs*

Those Extra Syllables

So, late last night, some folks on Twitter may have seen a slight... we'll call it a writer's crisis. I couldn't figure out how to bring out the voice in Mutants, and it was killing me. I'd fixed the major plotpoints that I'd previously had issues with and which had come up with a few agents when I'd been querying. I'd added a rather beautifully violent scene that I just want to hug. But the voice was flat.

Flat.

Really flat.

Pancake flat.

I was discussing this on Twitter and toying with the idea of switching the viewpoint to third from first, but one of my Twitter friends suggested perhaps I needed to go deeper rather than push myself away through third person.

A little after midnight, I was going through the first chapter while listening to a youtube discussion on the southern accent when it hit me... syllables... I needed to steal syllables from Hallie and make a ton of her dialogue into contractions, something that is common in the South. (There is no "I would have" but it's "I would've.") Then, I needed to add syllables to Lucas's inner dialogue because he wasn't raised there, and he'd self-educated through textbooks. Not only will he say "I would have" but he'd add in adverbs like "logically" or "optimally."

So, this section of the manuscript:

I brushed by my mother. Her perfume wound around me like a snake. It wasn’t subtle. She wasn’t subtle. No boy wants to know that his mother uses her body to get what she wants, but there wasn’t room for doubt on that.

Became:

I brushed by my mother. Her perfume wound around me like a snake. It wasn’t understated. It was cloying and obvious. She smelled lethal and menacing to me. Perhaps that was why I was drawn to Hallie’s simple scent of strawberries. There were no musky sensual undertones which spoke to me of the reality: my mother lured men to their deaths with the perfume. No boy wants to know his mother uses her body to get what she wants, but there wasn’t room for doubt on that. That, of course, wasn’t the only reason I liked Hallie’s scent but, from a clinically objective viewpoint, I couldn’t refute it might be a part.

It's still rough, but it's changed quite a bit. I'm toying with it anyway, and I think I know where I'm going. It's all about the syllables. Lucas will get more and Hallie is losing hers. BAWAHAHAHA! This might end up adding to the length of the manuscript, some of which I just worked hard to delete, but I'll work that out on my next revision possibly or maybe Mutants will end up being 90K instead of 75K like I want.

Anyway, that's my Wednesday writing plan. Today, I'm going to be very busy, so I won't get as much writing time as I'd like. Le sigh. Maybe I'll manage it tonight. I'm feeling the drive to fix this, the rush of the step beyond creation. Sometimes, manipulation of something you've created is just as satisfying as the original success. This feels this way.

The Stories Behind the Voices

This might be one of those posts that is just my internal dialogue spilling out onto the screen, but on the off-chance other people find the writing/revision process interesting...

I'm working on this other manuscript which I hadn't intended to work on at all. (Yes, I'm not working on my dystopian.) I've called it many names since I wrote it two years ago. Re: Straint and Good Girls Don't Date Mutants are the most memorable. We'll title it Mutants for right now and call it good.

So, Mutants is an odd little YA I wrote which doesn't fit in the genres I want it to. Most appropriately, it's probably a YA Science Fiction... which is yikes-worthy because Science Fiction isn't something that all agents and probably editors are begging for. This is even a Science Fiction Romance. A Contemporary Science Fiction Romance. I know, go figure... it's a mutant in itself really. It is one of the main reasons I originally queried Sarah... because her agency represents Science Fiction so I knew that I might eventually find a home for Mutants.

Anyway, so Mutants is the tale of a boy named Lucas who is one of 200 souls on the planet who has evolved to need bacteria to survive. Well, he does more than survive; he and the others of his kind are fast, stronger, can hear and see better, and are all around better. Unfortunately, he falls in love with a regular, average, every-day girl named Hallie. Some of his group, the Strain, don't agree with this and the more violent decide to kill them off. So, that's the story... a love story ... an infectious love story.

Unfortunately, Mutants has/had a little stalking problem. It glamorized stalking... which I didn't know how to get around it, but I've figured it out recently. Yay, no more stalking.

Now, Mutants has a little voice problem. It falls flat. It's set in Florida on the panhandle in a city. Setting, of course, we'll lead into voice. I set it where I used to live so that the accent wouldn't be a problem for me but then I just sort of forgot to add it in. Doh! No wonder it falls flat, huh? Well, I learned a ton about voice from revising SECRETS, and it's time to put it to work.

First, of course, there is character to take into account:

Lucas is a genius who has lived all over, so he most likely won't have a southern accent and his vocabulary will be higher. He's nineteen but he's led an anti-social life and buried himself in books so he'll stumble in conversations with Hallie. I need to work on establishing his voice quirks in my brain.

Hallie, on the other hand, is a senior in high school and she's lived in that city her whole life. She'll have an access and probably some colloquialisms. She's smart, but not as interested in science or learning as Lucas. She's more social than he is with more experience in dealing with others. She also is fearless when it comes to him and has no filter on what she'll say to him.

A few things I establish upfront with voice:

What are their word tics? What words do they say frequently that fill in gaps and create voice? (well, uhh, fine, rather, probably, yeah, cool, awesome, then, really, suddenly, hmm, just, maybe, anyway, still) I try not to overdo it so their vocabulary gets sloppy with the words, but they'll have those words.

What slang/profanity do they use? Piper always said "Frak!" but Gris more commonly said "Holy hell!" What will Lucas and Hallie and everyone else say?

How much will their upbringing and environment impact their speech? Is it mother or mama? Folks or people? Guys or boys? I just finished a revision on Curse Me A Story which is set in medieval times... and that was a whole different ball of wax, but their voices had really settled in by the end of the revision. I already know Lucas will call his mother "mother" both because he isn't originally from the South, but also because their relationship is distant. (She's a psychopath.) Hallie was raised there and has a really loving relationship with her mother. So, it's "mama" for her.

Once again, I'll be switching from feminine to masculine POV in first person in Mutant so there are also gender differences to account for. My husband's speech pattern is nothing like mine. One of my non-writing friends first drew my attention to this. She'd beta read my books and highlight words and say, "Guys don't say this, Wendy." Sometimes it was entire sentences, but sometimes it was individual words. In her opinion, guys don't use the word "so" like women do. I started listening to the differences between the speech of men and women after that. I mean, obviously, there are no finite rules with speech, but I can decide which words MY male character will not be saying, but my female character will.

There is also a distinction between what a person will say out loud and what they'll think in their heads that I try to factor in when I'm writing in first person, but that's a final draft sort of fix.

I was talking with Sarah about how what I learned from SECRETS is helping me revise MUTANTS. I'm also beginning to realize that this deep revision I'm doing on MUTANTS may help me with the revision I'll need to do on SECRETS for the film agent. Writing has always been like that for me... I learn through burying myself in manuscripts and then finding my way out. Once again, I'm glad that it's taken me as long as it has. I couldn't have improved CURSE ME or MUTANTS without the lessons I learned from SECRETS on voice.

Anyway, that's what I'm working on right now. Well, I'm still trying to work on removing the stalkery aspects and then I'll focus on voice idiosyncrasies, but that's my plans for this week. By the end of revising to focus on voice, I'll hear their voices in my head and it will be so thoroughly lovely that I might write about it again. I'm weird like that.

Have a good week, everyone!

Speak... and don't ever hold your peace

So, Sarah is at BEA (BookExpo America) this week which is a huge publishing conference for those non-writers out there. I asked her what I was supposed to be working on this week while she was gone. (Yes, I did get her the summary for Book 3, all you doubters out there. I'll have to write a post about that at some point. It was an interesting and worthwhile exercise--not just because I proved that I CAN do it.) She told me I could take a break. *Wendy laughs* A break! That's funny. I like that. A break. Yeah, but really... what am I supposed to be working on?

So, I'm working on the revision of Curse Me A Story this week. Sarah wanted me to drop the prologue and polish it. Well, after my recent focus on the Hidden Creek series, I just think this story needs its voice oomphed.

I know, I talk about voice a lot.

Honestly, voice is what makes or breaks a story for me. If I can't "hear" the voice of the characters in my head while I'm reading a story, I typically feel "meh" about it.

With Secrets of Skin and Stone, the turning point for me was when I realized I needed to add a southern voice to the book. That changed everything for me. Then, I really could hear their voices. In fact, I've had a hard time getting them out of my head.

Curse Me A Story is a fairytale retelling in a medieval setting so that's not the way I'll go this time of course. This story began as a first person POV story, and I switched it to third person. I'm wondering if that was a mistake. That's such a tough call with some stories. With others, it's never even a decision... it's obvious. Secrets of Skin and Stone was that way. Of course it was meant to be in first person. OF COURSE! With Curse Me A Story, I'm less sure.

Anyway, so this week's project is to breathe voice into Curse Me A Story and rework the beginning so it stands without a prologue. Wish me luck!

Days You Wish Your Characters Were Mutes

I'm mostly kidding.

I'm working on revising Promises of Light and Dark this week (I finished it on Saturday) which means I'm running through Secrets of Skin and Stone to get the voices in my brain for a read-aloud revision this week.

Normally, I can keep little character idiosyncrasies in my head, but having Piper be born and raised in Hidden Creek, Alabama where Gris was raised in Atlanta and has traveled around a lot to large cities... their speech patterns are different. As I mentioned, this book is in first person POV with alternating POV between the two. I have to make sure that Gris's chapters don't sound like Piper's chapters... and they both are consistent through the books. So, I've been going through Secrets of Skin and Stone and creating lists of the commonly used words and words they don't use for each of the characters that have chunks of dialogue. I also have an "all" list which includes all the southern speech quirks that apply to everyone. (Y'all, Ma'am... and so on.) Piper's and Gris's lists are very extensive.

Here is where I am for those two at half-way through the book (I think I've caught most of the major ones, though.):

Gris: Leastways, sweetheart, reckon, course, darn near, right (as in right near, right obvious, right awful, right sorry) fine, likely (instead of probably), alright, ought, clear out, NO fixin’ to, sorta, Great night in the morning, hell-fire, downright, holy hell, heck, anyways, overly much, real vs. really, yeah/sure vs. yes, bike vs. motorcycle, Mmm hmm, smidge, I had a mind, plenty, say so, partly, ‘member vs. remember, figure vs. think, scraping of, huh, skirt the edges of, as all get out, pissy, heap, bent, ornery, wholly vs. completely, just see if I wouldn’t, DOESN’T say though, by any stretch vs. by any means, fierce vs. brave, for darn sure, on account of, get a handle vs. get control, yonder, sides vs. besides, sweet, were something else, best (best stop, best not), holy crap, gotta, such as it is, and then some,

Piper: ‘Cause, though, real vs. really, downright, course, shoot, fixin’ to, flat-out, sorta, Holy frak, messing with, hide nor hair, all sorts of, alright, much of a, ought, sucked eggs, yeah/sure vs. yes, fine then, nah, fault vs. blame (you can’t fault), gotten, every now and again, all that, most often, paid no mind, anyways, nothing short of, fairly, C’mon, if it came right down to it, darn, weird, freak, amazing vs. awesome, Good night!, aggravating vs. annoying, smidge, leastways, particularly, neither vs. either, Heaven knew, heaps vs. loads, sensible, ‘neath, sticks yourself into commands (hush yourself, stop yourself), wrangled vs. wrestled, great green earth, lick of sense, by your leave, Umm, “his fool head off”, “some kind of”, look a treat, “Oh almighty no”, chucked vs. threw, shut my mouth!, tuck away food vs. eat, sorry (sorry tail, sorry fool), seeing as how, get purchase, tore off of, ain’t,

Some of these quirks I'll have remembered or might have worked their way in when I did the read aloud. (Piper's voice is very distinctive and persistent in my brain.) Still, I think it's a useful list and there is no way I'd be able to remember ALL that. I'd forgotten that none of them say "awesome" and you've probably noticed from how I write that I typically use that word a lot.

I've also been doing a cheat sheet of eye colors and random little facts that I know come up in the second book.

I'd planned to shelve Promises of Light and Dark for six months after I'd run it by some betas and my sisters, but Sarah asked to receive a copy to maybe slide by the film agent at the agency. (Having your agent follow your Twitter feed is useful... but also means you can't sneak projects by... which is also probably useful. LOL. I'm learning a lot about the film rights aspect to this business which is fascinating and strange, btw.)

So, I'll be busy for the next two weeks probably with this revision. You can openly mock me for my blog posts which will probably be a cross between my regular speech and Piper's. *head slap*

BTW... creating this list really made me wonder what my own personal speech idiosyncrasies list would look like. I know I say the word "awesome" overly much... and my kids use the word "actually" like it is actually going out of style and I know they got it from me. "Holy crap" would also make my list. My internal dialogue and written thoughts would look much different... that's another thing that's significant when you're writing characters in first person with distinctive dialogue voices... they're not quite the same inside their heads. You drop speech hesitation (umm... hmmm) and decrease their polite speech quirks. Piper is much less polite in her head. I am too, btw. I swear a bit in my head. *hangs head in shame*

So... that's what I'm up to. Revision. Revision. Revision. Voice. Voice. Voice.

I'm still really hoping that my brain doesn't latch onto book three, though. *fingers crossed* As much as I like Hidden Creek... I really want to work on my dystopian before I have to change my dates in the manuscript to make them actually take place IN the future. (Mostly kidding... I think my characters aren't even born for a few years yet, but still... I really want to finish this book!)

Have a good Tuesday, everyone!

Losing My Voice To Find Theirs

So, this has been the strangest revision I've ever done. Adding in a southern accent into a first person POV just isn't something you do every day... thank heavens. It's brutal. I finally finished with the read aloud late last night.

I did a comparison document, and it's just staggering how much changed in the name of voice. I've never put so much effort into figuring out whether or not my main character would say a single word. On the other hand, this manuscript might have the clearest voice out of any mine now. The longer I thought about what my characters might and might not say... the clearer it became how much our upbringing and environment might affect our speech and thought patterns.

Piper was born in Hidden Creek, Alabama... a small town. She's super smart, but she's picked up little colloquialisms from her family and surroundings. She is well-educated but she's still a teenager... and just because she might write an essay grammar perfect... doesn't mean she speaks or thinks anywhere near that way. She also has OCD so she spends a lot of time thinking about how dirty things are and what each person is really thinking. She also has like twenty thoughts for every one of Gris's. Her chapters are a lot longer. Her thoughts are more emotionally rich than Gris's too. She uses the word 'cause instead of because quite a bit. She doesn't use profanity but says stuff like "Hush my mouth!" and "Holy frak!" and "Good night!"

Gris has been living in Atlanta and other big cities in the South. He has an accent, but his speech is neater and less idiomatic. He didn't go to public school but he graduated early with a GED... so his social skills are less impacted by peers. You can tell he has had "respect women" beaten into him by his mama. He does use some profanity but it's more frequently in his head... or to get a rise out of Piper. He also is a nineteen year old boy... so his thoughts are more "physical" in nature. He typically evaluates things on a more surface-level than Piper does and doesn't obsess over the details nearly as much.

There were other words that I had to work out of the manuscript that were more "me" than "them." The word "okay" for example. "Okay" is my standard affirmative response. It's not theirs. Piper says "fine" and Gris says either "alright" or "alright fine." Neither would ever use the word "awesome" or "cool" or "wow" and it sounded really strange every time it snuck into the manuscript, so it was edited out. Neither says "someone" instead it's "somebody" or "a person." So the sentence: Do you think someone would do that? becomes: You reckon a person/somebody would do that? The word "really" was another hang up. It got cut or swapped out quite a lot. As did "so" and a few others. Some of the "still" and "well" pauses got to stick around, but not all of them. I didn't add any and I did cut quite a few.

Another strange change was that many of the ellipses and filler words wound up on the cutting room floor. They both had more deliberate thoughts and there were fewer mental rhetorical questions. Piper didn't spend half the book talking to herself in the form of questions. (I'll take "Southern Speech Patterns" for a thousand, Alex.) She pushed through to making suppositions. Gris just said things slower rather than saying "uhh...."

Anyway, so there were other words and other examples, but would you like to see how their first kiss changed with a southern voice being added? I thought you might. Hopefully you can tell the difference and the second excerpt has a bit more voice than the first... hopefully. I'd love opinions on this.

Remember to say it in your head with an accent. ; ) This is in a chapter from Piper's POV, btw.

Before:

“You’re interesting, but that’s not what it is. I’ve been… uhh… tutored my whole life. I’ve never attended public school. I don’t know how to do things in the right order or say the right things, Piper.”

“There is a right order?” I wasn’t even sure what we were talking about, but that seemed like a good place to start. Order was good. I liked order.

“Obviously—if you didn’t even know that I like you.”

“Like as a friend?” Did friends hold hands? Still, he hadn’t made any moves or….

He tipped my chin up with our joined hands, and his mouth touched mine.

Oh… so… like that. Wow. I was so going to count this as my first kiss.

Their first kiss southern-style:

“You’re interesting, but that’s not what it is. I’ve been home-schooled my whole life. Never attended public school or any school at all. I don’t know how to do things in the right order or say the right things, Piper.”

“There’s a right order?” I wasn’t even sure what we were talking about, but that seemed like a good place to start. Order was good. I liked order.

“There must be. I must be doing this all wrong if you hadn’t any idea I liked you.”

Gris couldn’t do things wrong if he tried. He could sweet-talk a snake out of its skin.

“Like as a friend?” Did friends hold hands? Still, he hadn’t made any moves or….

He tipped my chin up with our joined hands, and his mouth touched mine.

Oh… so… like that. His lips were soft and sweet on mine… and maybe just a bit unsure though that was hard to imagine since it was Gris. I was most certainly gonna count this as my first kiss.