The author has less than a week to go. She’s been working on a couple things, but it looks as though LAC 24 is damn near done. For the shortest book in the series (excluding half-books), it sure as hell took her the longest.

Anyway, here’s another chapter for you.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow, if you celebrate. Happy Thursday, if you don’t. Either way, know that we are thankful for those of you who are still hanging in there with us. Twenty-four and counting. (She damn well better still be counting.)

Chapter 4

Claudia took her frustration out on the GPS chick, demanding directions to Elmwood Drive. As she followed the given instructions, she pondered what possible totem thing could be made of elm. She seemed certain that she couldn’t identify an elm tree even if her life depended on it. I told her I could only if it had Dutch elm disease, owing to a lengthy article I had written a few years back. I did remember, though, “Elm leaves are serrated, like a bread knife.”

That little ditty had her stabbing repeatedly toward the glovebox. “That wood cutlery we took camping,” she said. “I have a set in there.”

“It’s bamboo,” I said with a laugh, “and how the hell does a knife represent anything about us?”

“Your sharp tongue,” she answered.

“It sure couldn’t be your sharp wit,” I retorted and muffled a laugh—just in case.

NaNoWriMo is now half over.

Wuuh-peesh!

Chapter 3

Claudia drove until she found a spot close to the mall’s main entrance. We recklessly gulped our beverages and then made for the door.

Looking at the glass-cased map just inside, we found not one store name bearing the word “wood.” Further, the numbers began in 100s, maybe so the mall seemed bigger in that hodunk town. Regardless of the reason, we had learned nothing.

She suggested, “How about we try to find things made of birchwood that represent our relationship and when we were kids?”

A lightbulb buzzed to life in my brain. “Or, when our relationship was young! Isn’t that what we were supposed to buy from the mall on Valentine’s Day?”

“Uh, you mean the weekend when you instead decided to drive to a porn shop in a blizzard and ended up in a ditch?”

I could not have been more displeased about having set myself up for that. Feigning utter cockiness, I answered, “Yes, that weekend.”

She shot me a dirty look, which I hoped to hell was also feigned.

Don’t want her losing steam in week two so here’s…

Chapter 2

Claudia shouted to the GPS chick that we needed to get to the mall in Athens by the quickest route possible. Then, she kind of stepped on it, leaving the professors to their fate.

As we drove, we tried to decrypt the message we had been given.

The mall, obviously, had something to do with wood, but we weren’t at all sure what.

“Well, if—”

That huge little word of hers caused the heels of her hands to smack the steering wheel at the same time mine slapped the dashboard. Her deafening “damn it” collided with my loud and severely elongated “yes.” Then, my left hand flapped in front of her. “Five bucks,” I less-than-adultly yelled. “You owe me five bucks!” 

We’ve been trapped on the corner of Elmwood and Arbor for God knows how long. We stomped, shouted, and spit inside the author’s head, all to no avail. She got derailed last year by that crap going on in your world, and she never righted herself and got back on the frickin’ track. She worked on other stuff, but not on our stuff. That made us stomp, shout and spit a bit louder, and then—believe it or not, we kinda shut up, too.

But—a big, big, big but…

She signed up for NaNoWriMo on November 1, as a rebel since she chose a work already in progress and not a crisp and clean page one. For three days now, she has worked on our stuff, on LAC 24, Loco Motion, which is where the hell we’ve been sitting for far too long, right in the middle of it.

Just to prod her on, I’m posting Chapter 1, and if she doesn’t keep making forward progress, I will keep posting chapters, including the roughest of the rough.

The chick in Claudia’s GPS gadget ordered her to take the next right, and she slowed to a crawl. We were in the middle of the frickin’ boondocks so there were no streetlights or signs by which to gauge that turn’s actual whereabouts. Suddenly, though, the tree line ceased, and a driveway and a huge sign appeared: Red Pine Motor Lodge.

Although we still crawled, her turn proved whiplashing.

The GPS chick announced, “Your destination has been reached.”

“What the hell?”

Before us sat a derelict-looking motel, the strip kind, i.e. unit next to unit next to unit next to… There were maybe eight or ten of them. I suspected Alfred Hitchcock had sized it up one day long ago and had deemed it far too creepy to be believable.

At the far end, an “Office” sign loomed at a cockeyed angle, and Claudia inched the car toward it.

When she shoved it into park, she looked at me, her mouth gaping. “We’re just supposed to walk in there and say, ‘Hi. We’re Alberta Cojones and Heady Heaper, and we have reservations’?”

I thought that was a damn good question, but I had already made up my mind: It seemed a job far better suited for a gangster than a gossip columnist.