Obnoxious Novelist How-to

(I think this could be pretty hilarious if we could not only incorporate bad writing from every genre, but also tell something of a connected story. With that in mind, I'm choosing romance as my genre, and picking it up with the protagonist emerging from the car.)


At last I reached Ladeeda Castle. The sight of its ancient soaring turrets and magnificent battlements made my heart sing with thrilled anticipation, and my eyes fill with tender, happy tears. Home at last. I opened the door of my shiny, red Jaguar, and swung my long, slim, elegant legs onto the curving, smoothly-paved driveway.

"Well, Lady Voluptua Fervor. Fancy seeing you here," growled a deep, sexy voice.

A tall, gorgeous hunk of man with dark wavy hair, black, penetrating eyes, and broad shoulders outlined by his elegantly-tailored Savile Row suit held out his muscular hand to help me out of the car.

I placed my slim, white, perfectly manicured hand in his, and immediately felt a shudder of electricity pierce my slender loins. But I wasn't about to show him how his mere touch made my thighs tremble and my heart beat faster in my voluptuous bosom. I tossed my long, red curls over my soft, ivory shoulder, and lowered my long lashes over my emerald green eyes.

"Well, if it isn't Blake Moneybags, devastatingly handsome wealthy upstart investment banker with a mysterious past who used his ill-gotten gains to purchase the neighboring estate out from under my noble but bankrupt uncle," I purred throatily. "And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

Suddenly the inescapable scent of a fresh incomparable vegetable tray wafted across my moustache under my nose tickling my irresistible lips and my heart beat even harder threatening to turn me into a double d then I saw that unlikable girl who used to torment but now has to wear sweatpants and a mumu to avoid all of the wrong kind of unavoidable attention and I felt an irresistible urge to walk over and indisguisably insult her because

she was hanging from the shoulder of Lyle Fainting, my old best friend from school who never knew what to say around me. I never understood why he blushed every time he was around me, or sent me valentine cards, or asked me to the prom, or wrote "I LOVE YOU VOLUPTUA" in flaming letters across the snowy front yard that one time we had a blizzard. Sometimes I think he was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what.

I'm upset you're all making fun of my sterling prose keyed ever so cleverly by my nimble, shapely fingers.

Whatever happened to respect your fellow hack?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't drive a cab.

I raised my delicately penciled eyebrows.

"Lyle, I had no idea you knew Bertha Slops. Quite a little party we have gathered here at Ladeeda Castle." I shook my head as a waiter held out a crudite platter. "And it appears to be catered. What's the occasion?"

Blake eyed me sardonically. "I see the good news hasn't reached you. Bertha and I are engaged to be married, and your dear mama is hosting our engagement party today. Lyle here is our best man."

He still held my trembling hand. With a careless yank of his muscular arm, he jerked me up from the driver's seat, bringing my firm, heaving breasts against his hard chest. He held me there for a moment, his dark eyes piercing mine, until I pulled away with a gasp.

"You...Bertha...congratulations." I murmured, as clouds passed over the brilliant sun that lit the green, sloping lawns of my beloved ancestral home. My full, pouting lips turned up in a conventional smile, but my heart bled. Only now, now that it was too late, I knew that I passionately loved my nemesis as much as I detested him, and I longed for him with every throb of my aching loins.

Lyle shook off Bertha's grasp and stepped toward me eagerly. A lock of his pale blond hair fell into his yearning blue eyes.

"Voluptua. I couldn't wait for you to arrive. You're going to be maid of honor. We'll walk down the aisle together. Isn't that wonderful?" He took my hand in both of his and kissed it passionately.

"Wonderful," I murmured. My eyes drifted over to Blake as Bertha seized his arm possessively. The corner of his sensuous mouth twitched up as he caught my eye.

I vowed, then and there, that I would never let Blake Moneybags see the trembling of my heart and loins, but would forever hide the smoldering heat of my passionate longing behind a triple-encased shield of ice.

Whap!

It was more than a surprise when Blake slapped himself in the face. Lyle rushed past, pulling me away.

"What just happened?" I asked.

"You see, Blake has tourette's, but it only flares up when you're around. That's why no one wanted to tell you about this. We can't have him punching out the entire wedding party."

I gasped. Could this be the reason Blake had never proposed to me despite his obvious blazing passion? But I would never let something like that come between us. It was all a massive misunderstanding that had kept his burning lips from mine, his strong arms from entwining my trembling body, his manly hands from ripping the delicate lace from my heaving bosom and caressing my voluptuous form, enticing me to shuddering spasms of rapture. For I too had a dark secret I had long hidden from him for fear of driving him away. I had to tell him all before it was too late.

I wrenched away from Lyle and turned back to Blake. But Blake was no longer there. Instead ...

...from out of the Utz Potato Chip Bag hopped a creamy, tan, short-haired Chihuahua wearing an impeccable Brooks Brothers suit and carrying a bottle of Grey Goose.

He unfolded his briefcase, which turned into a very classy bar at the corner of Fifth and North Umberland, and placed the bottle on the counter.

A white van pulled up and pushed three violently moving trash bags out, then raced away.

Within moments, a battery charged lightning bolt in generic knock off sneakers raced around the corner with a machete. Seconds later the bags opened and out popped Cindy, Sandy and Candy, all experienced waitresses, who began taking orders despite the reporters and police who all wanted to know where they had been.

"Ya see the sign over the bar?" Candy asked pointing to a sign that said 'Free Candy'

'It worked', said Cindy as she curled up in Blake's lap purring like a Siberian Tiger ready to eat a turkey.

"He's mine, you she devil!" I shrieked.

My red hair tumbled over my heaving bosom as I grasped Cindy's arm and yanked her from Blake's lap. But I dropped her headlong into the hummus as I caught a glimpse of the debonair chihuahua behind the bar.

"Care for a shot of Lagavulin?" he murmured, raising his eyebrows repeatedly over his devilishly suggestive grin.

And it was at the Injustice of all this, with Envy warring with Empathy in my dewey bosom, I reflected on the greatness that was Castle Ladeeda. It sprawled with open arms through the verdant rolling hills of Nature, decked in more and livlier flowers than even Blake had ordered from the florist. The breath of the wind through my hair, the throng of the soil beneath my feet; it was as if Life itself sympathized with my plight, with that great Sympathy known only by things that are living. Take, for instance, the ants, now crawling up to occupy that open bag of potato chips. Oh, if only my Love could lead the ants of Blake's affection to the picnic of my kisses!

"Free Candy." They still left the sign up as if I wasn't free, but I am free. I've been free ever since the night it happened, that super-mysterious thing that I'm not going to explain until you've trudged through 400 pages of musings on the nature of life.

The trudging is important though, it's a metaphor, see? If you don't trudge, you won't progress. If you don't progress, you'll never arrive. If you never arrive, you'll never be disappointed. If you're not disappointed, you won't look fondly back on the trudging because really it's the journey that counts. Trudging is motion and motion is life. It's a metaphor for life...but you didn't hear that from me.

Anyway, the chihuahua's name is Chico, because the chihuahua's name is always Chico. He wasn't always a chihuahua, any more than I was always Candy. We both got demoted...

"This is supposed to be my engagement party!" wailed Bertha. She stomped her unpedicured Birkenstocked foot on the lawn. "Blake! Blake, aren't you going to do something? I told you we shouldn't have had it here. I knew that witch Voluptua would ruin everything with her trashy chihuahua friends and her cheap candy! You'd better take care of it now, or" -- she clutched Blake's arm and hissed into his ear. "Or I'll tell everyone your secret."

Lyle stood a few feet away, smiling slyly to himself as he eyed Voluptua. No more peeping into windows with binoculars or holding up boomboxes playing love songs or burning names into the snow for him.

This time, his plan was going to work.

Lyle spun around and strode with confidence to his puce colored Volvo. His heart raced with anticipation as he pulled into the circular drive of his parent's aging Victorian mansion, his half-inch heeled leather boots clicking over the terrazzo that lead to his elaborately decorated lair in the lower third section of the east wing. Pausing for a moment to peruse the framed, matted, highly magnified grainy images of the object of his desire, he closed his eyes to let the mantra wash over him. "Someday, you will be mine," repeated over and over in his laudinum-laced mind.

He turned to his task, lining up knives, duct tape, clothes pins, and yogurt covered raisins into precise rows. His ministrations took on a near religious fervor, hyper aware of Blake's smoldering eyes searing into the nape of his neck from the images hanging neatly on the wall behind him.

That's when Solemn turned away, shaking her raven hair in disgust. Her mom's cocktail parties were always so ridiculous and full of people she would never want to be. She moped in the garden until the moon was full above her, wondering if she would ever be wrapped up in such a banal existance.

Solemn didn't wear make up, but suffered from a perfect porcelain complexion that made others question whether or not she was anemic. She sulked dolefully, wondering about the veracity of kittens, and wished for a grand knight on a white horse to sweep her away from all of the decadence, and show her a life that was REAL. Real, but with a knight on a white horse, and maybe vampires and such.

I stood at the window watching my younger sister Solemn moon around in the garden. My sheer black negligee displayed rather than hid my curvaceous charms. I sighed and wiped a tear. I knew exactly how Solemn felt. For I too felt the pointlessness of existence. I too longed for a handsome knight with a long, powerful spear who would sweep me up on his powerful stallion, and let me ride for hours. I passed my fingers slowly downward over my curves, sighing.

Why had mama agreed to throw the engagement party for Blake and Bertha? Why had she served hummus when she knew I despised it? Had she hired the debonair chihuahua bartender to distract me? Well, my feeble attempt to distract myself with the chihuahua had come to nothing, as I knew it would. No man could touch my innermost core and make me tremble and throb as Blake could with a single searing glance. And Blake...Blake hadn't even noticed me. He'd disappeared at some point in the evening. Had I lost him forever?

I heard a familiar tread behind me. I swirled around, my heart pounding beneath my subtle, pouting breasts.

what i saw there was a ghost n not leik the kinds on scooby doo where u pull off the rubber mask n its really farmer joe n he says it wuld have worked if it hadnt been 4 u meddling kids no this was a reel ghost n it was transluncent n stuff n it floated abuv teh floor and i sed OMG!!!!1 i thought u were but it shooshed me n said u must come wit me now 4 tehre r dark plots afoot and i dindt get it cuz the ghost dnt have ne feet just dragging gauze but i

went wiht teh ghost anyway b/c whatever n then we were in teh garden n Solemn wuz thier totaly making out wiht this tall guy n i sed like totaly joking n evrything "y r u makking out with that guy cuz he's like totally 2 old 4 u!" n I wuz laffing but then teh guy terned around n OMG!!! it wuz totally Blake!!! n I wuz like wtf, rite?

Sorrowful.

Sheer. Agonizing. Painful.

SORROWFUL SORROW.

Shooting through my heart like the arrows of some malevolent archer of suffering, tipped with the poison of betrayed trust.

Solemn.

And Blake.

Together.

Agony.

Betrayal. Misery.

Climbing through my fingers and down my throat like Pepto Bismol made out of sorrow.

Under this starry sky, a million needles, electric hell, stripping the night of its comforting blanket of obliviousness and leaving this wedding party with the cold feet of decay.

My lips trembled as I opened them to say,

'The pain,' I ejaculated. 'I can't take the pain of it.'

The ghost rounded on me, its ghostly visage a mask of phantasmal secrets and lies, betraying itself once again of the grim moral paucity I'd have revealed if it wasn't for the meddling kids' lacklustre efforts.

Cackling harshly it brought a skeletal hand to its face and began to...

...play a plaintive tune on the harmonica as I chastised my erring sister.

"Solemn, you wretched girl. That's my scarf. I've told you time and again not to take my things without asking. Give it back this instant."

"OMG, like, you are so totally materialistic!" whined Solemn.

"Silence, insolent trollop!". I snatched the gauzy relic from Solemn's feeble grasp and turned my angry visage on Blake.

"I dreamed not, sir, that as I paced restlessly in my chamber yonder awaiting your presence you were hither dallying with my young slut of a sister."

"My lady!" Blake knelt at my feet. "I beg thy mercy. Indeed, I did not mean..."

"Be silent!" I cried wrathfully. "I shall deal with you as you deserve. But firstly this wench needs learn a small lesson about coveting my property." I pointed at Solemn and beckoned imperiously to the ghost. "She is yours, Spirit. Do with her as you will. But do stop playing that dreadful tune."

The spirit dropped his harmonica and disappeared as quickly as he had materialized in my chamber. Solemn gave a single agonized wail and then hung limp. But she did not fall. She drifted upward and to the west, toward the ruined tower on the horizon whence no man had dared enter for untold generations.

"And now you!" I hissed to Blake.

Solemn woke up in an auditorium seat, and she noticed it was totally better than those crappy plastic seats at the school gym that always cracked in places where they'd scrape off your skin and the guy who sat in them before you spilled like three gallons of coke nad rum on. This seat was red and soft and she didn't see the slightest sticky pop stain. There was a stage, too, made of wood, with big thick curtains that were big, and also thikc, and it all would have been very cool if everything hadn't been ringed with so many cobwebs you could mistake them for cotton candy, or fake cobwebs from Halloween that are made out of the samw stuff as Q-tips. Maybe it was still cool, though, just cool like in a vampire movie.

Vampires were so dreamy.

Solemn was startled to see other people in the theater seats, intently watching the stage. Dead people, anyway; they were all filmy ghosts, dressed like Wynona Ryder and Gary Oldman in that one old vampire movie, which was like from the middle ages or something.

"Wow, was this up in that old turret all this time?" Solemn said. "Why'd they keep it so locked up? It's way totally cooler than any other part of the house! I totally would rather be staying here than in that crappy corner of the basement wine celler which is the only room my wicked stepmother would let me have, and only if I swept and polished the windows and dusted and stuff!"

Suddenly, the ghost who brought her here appeared beside her. She scooted away, because she'd seen this other movie where ghosts were all slimy and stuff, and she was wearing her favorite peppermint-striped Angelic Pretty bloomers and peppermint-candy shaped handbag with her BTSSB cutsew and lace stockings and calf-high boots and flowery headband and parasol which somehow hadn't gotten a speck of dust on them in spite of being dropped into an ancient theater seat full of cobwebs. Fortunately, the ghost was not very slimy at all. He was actually kind of cute. And he said,

"If your sister will not help me, then you must! There is a diabolical plot to steal your family's fortune and Castle Ladeeda! I do not know who is responsible for it, only that it will not be successful unless you and your siste,r the proper heirs, are eliminated! Somebody will try to do just that unless you and you alone stop him!"

"But can't I just tell our parents?"

"Don't be ridiculous! You must immediately start doing dangerous things and making incredibly poor choices, or you and your sister are doomed!"

And then

...the chain on the door of the old tower broke with a resounding snap. Lyle burst onto the stage with a limp duct-taped figure slung over his shoulder. Even from her distant seat, Solemn could see that the helpless captive was Blake.

"What the hell, man!" snarled Lyle. "This freaking tower is supposed to be deserted!"

He dumped Blake unto a cobweb-covered sofa that appeared to be part of a two-hundred-year-old stage setting, and brandished a knife toward the audience of ghosts.

"You wanna piece of me, punks? Do ya? Yeah, well, bring it!"

All the ghosts swarmed toward him in a single translucent rush. But alas, though they meant well, they were, after all, ghosts. They simply passed through Lyle without so much as mussing his hair, which, when you think about it, is slightly inconsistent with the fact that one of them had managed to transport Solemn half a mile to this tower, but never mind.

Lyle laughed maniacally. "Is that all you got, punks?"

Solemn realized that she was the only other living creature in the place besides the helpless and unconscious Blake. Lyle was a foot taller than she was and had a knife. And he wasn't hampered by calf-high boots with four-inch stiletto heels.

Still, the hot ghost had said she needed to do dangerous things and make some incredibly poor choices if she wanted to save the family fortune and Castle Ladeeda. And confronting a knife-wielding maniac in order to rescue the slightly skeevy much-too-old guy who'd been cheating on his fiancee with an underage girl, and with whom her older sister was in love, seemed like a good start.

But it was dark. Velvety dark. Dark like the darkness found in the deepest cellar in the biggest castle on the tallest mountain. Dark like the darkness found behind the eyes of Death himself. Dark dark dark.

Solemn moved forward slowly, her slim, long-fingered hands stretched forward into the velvet darkness, searching for the roughness of the stone wall, or the smooth glass in the window or the softness of the rich velvet hangings on the wall. Suddenly her heart leapt in her chest and her big eyes grew round as the sound of Smoke On The Water drifted up the stairs.