Michele has posted Chapter 2 of her Dead Celebs, her latest work in progress. Here is a little teaser for you. Make sure you head over to Adventures in Writing to read the rest of the chapter. (You won't be sorry!) And click here for my earlier post so you can watch the book trailer. Make sure to check back next week for another teaser from Chapter 3.
I am not a rebel by nature. Or who knows…maybe I am. However, life has seemed to dictate what my nature could and could not be, and rebel was one of those things that I could not be. Not after what my parents had gone through. I could never yell, lie, sneak out of the house, talk back. None of that. Therefore, leaving behind my mother and father on that late April afternoon was by far the most rebellious thing I had ever done in my twenty-eight years, and honestly it left me feeling cold. Poor Mama Cass with her thick coat must have hated me on that fifteen hundred mile journey, because I was freezing cold the whole way and I cranked up the heater in my van, even through Arizona at eighty degrees. It was the kind of cold that you can feel on the inside—that only a real hot bath combined with a hot tea, and then a tuck between the covers can cure.
I wasn’t sick. No sore throat. No aching body. Nothing like that. I was just cold.
And then, after three days of driving and staying in cheap motels, I took the 10 West all the way into Los Angeles. The first thing I did was head to the ocean—Venice Beach to exact, and yes L.A. has plenty of blonde, beautiful people and then some, but let me just say for the record that there are a ton of freaks in L.A., especially Venice beach. I saw one guy with hair that I can’t even describe the color, kind of that baby food like green pea color. I shudder to think about it, because not only was the color bad, but it was almost down to his butt and twisted and gnarled. Gross. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his shorts were well beneath the boxers. Not an attractive picture and then there was the iguana he had wrapped around his neck. Never saw that before. Mama Cass went totally berserk yapping away at him and the iguana. I had to yank pretty hard on her leash to get her to move on with me, while the guy snarled, “Get your mangy piece of shit mutt away.” Um, okay. Excuse me? My dog, mangy? Look who was talking. I decided best to keep my mouth shut and move along, tugging on Cass the entire way.
But once we got past that we took in the ocean color—silvery blue--the smell—fresh, oceany, minus the cigarette smoke and tanning oil that occasionally wafted it’s way toward us--the crashing waves, the sandy beach like a picture postcard—and then, we people watched for quite some time. Cheapest entertainment in the world. All I’m saying is, bring a lawn chair, a bag of Tostitos and a six pack of sodas and the movies have nothing on Venice Beach. When I have to get away from anything famous and dead, I head to Venice Beach. The way to beat crazy I figure is to go and see even more crazy.
I am not a rebel by nature. Or who knows…maybe I am. However, life has seemed to dictate what my nature could and could not be, and rebel was one of those things that I could not be. Not after what my parents had gone through. I could never yell, lie, sneak out of the house, talk back. None of that. Therefore, leaving behind my mother and father on that late April afternoon was by far the most rebellious thing I had ever done in my twenty-eight years, and honestly it left me feeling cold. Poor Mama Cass with her thick coat must have hated me on that fifteen hundred mile journey, because I was freezing cold the whole way and I cranked up the heater in my van, even through Arizona at eighty degrees. It was the kind of cold that you can feel on the inside—that only a real hot bath combined with a hot tea, and then a tuck between the covers can cure.
I wasn’t sick. No sore throat. No aching body. Nothing like that. I was just cold.
And then, after three days of driving and staying in cheap motels, I took the 10 West all the way into Los Angeles. The first thing I did was head to the ocean—Venice Beach to exact, and yes L.A. has plenty of blonde, beautiful people and then some, but let me just say for the record that there are a ton of freaks in L.A., especially Venice beach. I saw one guy with hair that I can’t even describe the color, kind of that baby food like green pea color. I shudder to think about it, because not only was the color bad, but it was almost down to his butt and twisted and gnarled. Gross. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his shorts were well beneath the boxers. Not an attractive picture and then there was the iguana he had wrapped around his neck. Never saw that before. Mama Cass went totally berserk yapping away at him and the iguana. I had to yank pretty hard on her leash to get her to move on with me, while the guy snarled, “Get your mangy piece of shit mutt away.” Um, okay. Excuse me? My dog, mangy? Look who was talking. I decided best to keep my mouth shut and move along, tugging on Cass the entire way.
But once we got past that we took in the ocean color—silvery blue--the smell—fresh, oceany, minus the cigarette smoke and tanning oil that occasionally wafted it’s way toward us--the crashing waves, the sandy beach like a picture postcard—and then, we people watched for quite some time. Cheapest entertainment in the world. All I’m saying is, bring a lawn chair, a bag of Tostitos and a six pack of sodas and the movies have nothing on Venice Beach. When I have to get away from anything famous and dead, I head to Venice Beach. The way to beat crazy I figure is to go and see even more crazy.
No comments:
Post a Comment