Hey Folks! Hope all’s supercalifragilistic (..ha!)!
OMGosh – Someday, I’m going to learn that writing part of a chapter one day and trying to finish it another is one of hardest things for me to do… it’s almost as though if I don’t finish it and move on that day, the next day I read it, it doesn’t sound the same (or something too subtle for me to detect is missing). Nonetheless, below, checkout this chapter I started but didn’t finish in one sitting. Where it ends is literally where I stopped. Once you’ve read it however, feel free to add your own ending.
Many thanks, and stay safe!
Phil
Alexa sat a volume back on a display table and then ambled along a marble hallway until a flyer inside a display case caught her eye and halted. She leaned into a glass.
Independence Day Essay Contest. 10,000 word minimum. $500.00 Prize.
“I could loan you the five hundred dollars…”
Alexa spun around.
A golden-haired woman in a pant suit and scarf grinned at her. “…but that would take the fun out of things, would it not?”
Alexa sighed. “Deana, you do know this is a library?”
Deana glanced over her shoulder. “So, it is.”
“So, what are you doing here?” Alexa turned, stamped along the hall, and heard footsteps just over her shoulder.
“I’m I not a literary agent?”
“Literary agent or bottom line-driven cut-throat whose only concern is finding the next hot thing?”
Deana chuckled. “Can’t I be both?”
Alexa shrugged. “Free country.” She marched into a gallery whose wall-to-wall-book balcony surrounded a ground level where tables of nose-buried visitors stretched to distant, stained glass windows. She stopped at a librarian’s desk.
“‘The Ritualists’ by Phillip Edwin, please.”
The library nodded, typed in a computer, and squinted into a screen.
Deana leant on the counter beside Alexa and nodded, as well. “Literary Fiction? Someone searching for inspiration?”
Alexa snapped toward her. “What do you want?”
“To see how you’re doing.” She shook her head. “Were things so bad where I can’t drop-in and how things are?”
Alexa glared at her.
“Ma’am…”
Alexa turned to the librarian who held a sticky note.
“…Section 4527. If you’d please follow—”
“—Oh, no worries,” Alexa said. “I can find it.” She took the note and grinned. “Many thanks.” Grin faded however, she turned to Deana. “I’m fine. Good day.” She stamped through tables, past book-stacked return carts,