Blank Sheet

Tap, tap, tap, tap. My fingers struck the keyboard with lightening precision. The sea breeze and light music playing at the restaurant I was at made me all the more in the zone. Sitting on the little pavilion outside, sipping my sweet tea, I stared hard at the screen that was quickly filling with words. My idea to get away from it all in the cold mid-west was paying off as I sat in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in the mild California winter. Granted I wouldn’t be taking a dip in the water any time soon, but it was still a hell of a lot better than the ice storms they were having back home. My friend Beth had called to curse me on my decision to head west right before it hit.

That was one of the things that I loved about my job. I could just pick up and go wherever I please and I wouldn’t have to worry about calling in sick or anything. My name is Alice Rachelle Owens, or to my readers, A.R. Hawkins. To my friends and family though, it’s just Al. Pushing my thick framed glasses up my nose to their original position, my fingers decided to take a break. Right then I was working on my newest book, the third in a series, ‘The Adventures of Mot and Connie - Rumble in the Brazilian Jungle.’ The first two books weren’t exactly hits like Harry Potter, but they did very decent. As soon as rumors of me possibly turning the first book, ’The Adventures of Mot and Connie - Hawaiian Delight’ into a second or possibly a series were heard by my publisher, they were all over it like white on rice.

It was very exciting for a mid-west girl that was still in college and was going to be a business major. So ditching the school, much to my parents dismay, I worked on the second book ‘The Adventures of Mot and Connie - The Luck of the Irish.’ Now I had to come up with a third book and the readers on my website were begging for some sort of romantic twist between the ever lovable and extremely unpredictable Mot and his lovely and excitable friend Connie. The two were like peas in a pod and it was hard for me to make them romantic about each other.

Yeah I mean there was Mot being all dastardly and hitting on Connie in a joking way, but they had grown close and were best of friends. It would be hard to turn that into something more.

‘Aw,’ Mot would say if he were her with me. ‘Do you remember when we first met shnookems?’ Connie would sit next to him and nod, playing along.

‘Remember when you tried to hijack me and my rental too? Ah memories,’ she would sigh happily.

Just for further notice, my characters Mot and Connie, will add their two cents. The way I describe it to everyone is they’re like my Drop Dead Fred. I’ve been known to do and say things on their account because of something they say or do in my head.

Am I mental? No, I’m a writer. These things exist and act for a reason! It’s how I got to be the writer I am today and will be for a very long time. It’s why it’s so damn hard to make them do something that I don’t think they would do.

These two are my babies, my first real big work of art so to speak. To me they were more real and extensions of myself, but what writer doesn’t do that? Well besides the non-fiction writers, but even then they’re style of writing really shows through with their works. Back to the point, it was hard to write romance about two characters that you had started out with and never had that in mind for them. When that thought ran through my head, that was about when I stopped typing.

“Shit,” I breathed. I had lost it. The plot. . . It just disappeared from my head. I had it all planned out and now that romance was thrown into the equation I would have to try and rework the whole dynamic of the story. “Damn you publishers,” I seethed, leaning back against my chair.

‘See what happens when you try to perfect perfection? You divide by zero,” Mot would say, making an explosion noise and mushroom cloud with his hands. Connie would just giggle and nod.

Grabbing my tea, I sipped it a bit trying to get back what I had just lost. One good reason I went to Huntington Beach instead of stay with the yetis back home, I wouldn’t have to deal with distractions from other people asking me to go hang out with them, babysitting, or some other task that I would have to do because ‘You’re a writer, you can just pick up and go and do whatever you want. You don’t have a schedule.’

Oh ho! My dear friends are wrong! I have a schedule I keep myself on and I like to stick to it as close as possible so it’s not ten freaking years later that I write another cause I was off doing something counter productive.

Sighing, I leaned over and dug in my lap top bag before I pulled out some headphones. Plugging them in, I scrolled through my extensive music library and settled on Journey for a bit to clear my head. When you’re a writer, a REAL writer, one that delves themselves into their stores so much that their characters take on a life of their own, you actually find yourself talking to them in your head. That is if you’re out in public. At my place I’m usually raging on at Mot or Connie about something they did in the book, but that’s just me.

‘Come on Mot, do something,’ I sighed as I stared at my screen. All I got was the cursor blinking like a pendulum.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

It was like he and Connie had just disappeared. This was worse than when I had a business marketing project and only a day to do it. I had had to write, direct, and edit a commercial for a skateboarding park that they would actually use for TV. Some how I pulled something out of my ass and it made it to the small screen with an A-. How I did it is still a mystery to me. My partner did appreciate it though, lazy git.

Maybe I just needed to find someone to antagonize my amazingly punk duo other than villagers that swore Mot’s phone would steal their soul. Who would it be though? Time to start scanning the people of this fair city. Pressing shuffle on my music player, I started to people watch. One of the bad things about the restaurant I chose was that EVERYONE was the same. It was quite depressing actually. I wasn’t sticking out like a sore thumb or anything, but when you’re sitting there with black/blue hair and a small nose ring, you stand out a bit amongst pastel colored polo shirts and khaki pants and shorts.

The anti-hero of the story could be a country club arch nemesis of Mot’s from childhood. The mere thought of chibi Mot versus a chibi country clubber made me giggle. Saving the document that has the story I was working on, I opened up a new one and quickly started to type out a script for a possible comic strip for my site as well. Although I had been a business major and not art, I was still pretty handy with a pencil. Just little random ideas that come to me like that helped make the writing process less stressful. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, just sometimes. . .

A sudden blur of black and a cackle brought me out of my haze and as just finished up the four panel comic script. Looking up, I saw three men. Now there was a group that would go great in my book. Studying them, they didn’t even to seem to notice me staring. One was tall, like really tall. He had one of those reverse mullet hair cuts, like long in the front and short n’ spiky in the back. I think I had one my freshman year of high school. They all had tattoos, but the tall one had a pair of hand cuffs on his neck outlined in red. . . Interesting. They all wore eyeliner too.

I never really got why you would wear eyeliner, but that’s just me. Another was wearing a ball cap backwards with a shag cut. From what I could tell, his arms were covered in monsters. His sleeveless shirt left little the imagination about his body as well. The last one looked like he’d been drunk at a Christmas party and had his hair attacked by elves. Chunks of it were blond, red, and green. The shortest of the group, he stuck out with about half a foot shorter than the second guy.

Maybe a band of thieves come across Mot and Connie, yeah! A smuggling ring! Maybe one could be romantically linked to Connie, a past love. A cop out of getting around Mot and Connie together. Grinning ear to ear, I saved the comic strip and brought up the document of ideas and quickly typed it down. So much more came from just those three showing up. Bless you three strange men!

“Hi!” A voice chirped suddenly next to me.

“Ah!” I screamed on gut reaction as I jumped in my seat. I looked next to me to find the tallest man sitting in the seat next to me. Wide eyed, I slowly settled down again. All he did was just grin at me. It was slightly unnerving to be quite honest.

“I’m Jimmy,” he said holding out his hand as if I hadn’t just screamed in his face.

“Al,” I said taking his larger paw in my own and shaking it.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, just saw you looking at me and I’d thought I’d come over to say hi.” It was interesting. It was almost like talking to a caffeined up Mot. But Mot wasn’t real, so what did that make this guy?

“Nice to meet you Jimmy,” I said, quickly saving the idea document and closing it out.

“So Al, what are you doing that was making you stare so intently at me? Was it my gorgeous eyes? No, wait, my ass. I get that a lot. Everyone loves my ass.” The grin just widened as I quirked an eyebrow. Something about his situation felt a little too familiar in a very scary way.

“I was just thinking really,” I blinked as I finally realized he still held my hand. Slowly, I took it back and set it on the arm rest of my chair.

“Thinking about how I am in bed? I know, it’s hard not to think about, but I promise the real thing is so much better than your imagination.” Ok, this was getting way to weird. It was like I was really talking to Mot. . . Maybe I’d finally flipped my lid. Without hesitation, I reached out and poked him in the face. This time it was his turn to look confused, though the grin did stay. “What was that for?”

“I was making sure that you were real and not a figment of my imagination,” I said plainly.

“Nope, I’m really real sweet heart,” he chuckled.

“Jimmy!” The short man shouted, getting our attention. “Time to go! Matt’s gonna kick our ass if we’re late again!”

“I hate to love you then leave you, but duty calls,” he said as he stood up. I was about to ask something, but he pressed a finger to my lips and shushed me. “Don’t cry. You’ll find someone else just as good as me.” He smiled before hopping over the little fence that surrounded the patio dining area. I sat there blinking for a moment trying to figure out what the hell just happened as he and his two friends disappeared. Checking my tea, I made sure it wasn’t a Long Island Iced Tea before saving everything on my lap top and shut it down. That was enough excitement for me that day. God only knows how tomorrow’s gonna be.