My Novel

Hello EVERYONE!

Just digressing from other work I should be doing! Hehe! Anway, I took this class this semester called The Novel. I have to say it is turning out to be one of my favourites. In it we are to write a 2000-3000 chapter of a book. Anyway, I decided to write something in the teenage genre. It is a comedy and so far I have gotten good feedback from my class mates. Here is a sneak peak of part of the chapter! Any pointers etc I am all ears! Enjoy!!!!!!!! Mind you this is still very rough and in the drafting stage! Anyway any crits I am sooooo open!

Bollywood Nights
CHAPTER ONE

The smell of the frankincense from my mom’s incense burner on her dashboard is giving me a headache and her Cat Stevens ‘Greatest Hits’ CD makes me want to vomit.

I look over at her bobble headed Buddha, which sits peacefully next to her ascended Jesus and rotating Ganesha statue. I glare at my mom as she flicks aside a strand of her long golden locks and smiles her Jonie Mitchell smile back at me.

‘Come on…no one saw! Look, we got the full moon gathering tonight. Aunt Jane, Uncle Karl and Sky will be there! She says enthusiastically as she leans across the seat and grabs a fistful of my thigh.

I squirm away like a feral cat. ‘Mom you’re delirious! They saw you grope me… and they ALL heard you call me moon beam! Like, do you realize what you picking me up from school has done? Not only was I talking with Brenda Spencer, like the coolest girl in school, but you totally embarrassed me! Craig O’Brien thought you were some loony crazed pedophile… Argh!’ I stare at my mom from over top of my sun glasses in hopes that she’ll somehow burst into flames. She smiles back at me and turns up the radio.

Just as Cat Stevens finished belting out ‘Moon Shadow,’ my mom veers her candy apple red bug into our drive way just in time for me to sink down even further into the seat.

‘What the hell?’ I whisper under my breath the moment I make eye contact with my topless father who’s plucking away at the strings of an Indian sitar on our front porch.

‘Oh God! ’ I slam the car door and pound up the walk.

‘Be nice!’ snaps my mom as she grabs her multi colored crocheted purse and follows after me.

‘Sounding good baby!’ says my mom as she wiggles her hips past our herb garden and begins snapping her fingers wildly about her head.

‘MOTHER!’ I bolt up the steps, throw my bag against the screen door and duck for cover behind our brown lounge chairs.

‘Oh Kali cool it!’ She says as she as she parks herself onto the arm rest of the swing and begins twirling my dad’s grotesquely long chest hair between her mood ring infested fingers.

‘What?’ Says my dad as I get up, stare at them disgusted and then tare open the screen door.

‘No Jack, I said rhinestones on a bolero jacket not studs… RHINESTONES!’ stammers my Uncle Reggie as he balances the cordless phone on his neck, waves at me and whispers, ‘Your Aunt Jack’s such a bitch!’

I roll my eyes and he shuffles past in his pink fuzzy slippers.

I drop my book bag by the stairs; take a deep breath and then swing around the corner into the kitchen. Immediately, I head for the freezer where I remember I’d hid a Butter finger chocolate bar that I had stole out of my Aunt Jack’s purse earlier that morning.

‘Kali, go tell Uncle Reggie Grandma messed herself again,’ my deeply depressed older brother Kurt says as he pushes his chair away from my Grandma in disgust. ‘And, she keeps meowing like a cat, and she won’t eat her pureed, he waves the bowl underneath his nose, peas!’

‘Kurt, I begin as I stick my head inside the freezer to move a box of dehydrated sea-weed, fuck off!’ I pull out my head, slam the door and smile as my trembling hands clutch tightly to my sweet reward.

My brother looks at me from beneath his white and black face paint and without any emotion says, ‘Well, for that remark you’ve just earned yourself a place in my voodoo doll collection!’ He stares at me from beneath his saggy eye lids, there’s a moment of awkward silence between us and then he pushes back his chair and runs upstairs.

‘Meeeooow!’ shouts Grandma Wellington. I lean against the fridge and look over at her only to realize she’s conversing with her spoon. I walk over to the table and plop down by her wheel char.

‘I hate my life,’ I say out loud as my Grandma taps me on the shoulder sputters out airplane noises and I swerve just in time for me to notice her concoction of mashed up peas coming straight for me.

.............stay tuned for more!!!!!!!