#rrc editing

[jj-shubert-writes]

Bonus: the only thing you need to know about Rex other than the fact that he is right an annoyingly high percentage of the time

[jj-shubert-writes]

Rat's Driver's Ed!

“Tide Island or bust,” I decide. A few of the others call in their agreements. Lily peels out first—the track’s at the same level as it was this morning, so it’s about level with this balcony—but waits for the rest of us to catch up. “Hopefully not bust,” Eli whispers, holding the steering wheel tighter than necessary. We jerk forward. “Sorry. Gosh. This is—so different from being a passenger. I can feel it. Is that—normal?” “Yeah. I can climb back over if you want. Or are you good?” I ask. He grins hugely and nods hard. I watch Craw and Jacques overtake us and I squint. “You wanna try punching it?” “Huh? Punch what?” “Foot down on the accelerator. Hard,” I suggest as even Rex’s monster truck trundles ahead of us. I am not gonna train a rules-of-the-road abider if I can help it. Eli stares unblinking out the windshield for a few seconds. Then the motor roars and we slam forward. He startles and whoops with laughter. I cheer and kick my feet up onto the dashboard as he figures out accelerating a little more gracefully. We overtake Rex. I point devil horns at him with my fingers as we go, only to find he’s already pulling an eyelid down and sticking his tongue out at me from his window. I laugh til my stomach hurts.

Having so much fun with this because on one hand, Rat is corrupting Eli and being on the same gremlin freakuency as Rex and I love them, and on the other hand, Rat is continuing to help Eli expand his skills and literally putting him in the driver's seat to reaffirm his autonomy

[jj-shubert-writes]

Just added a great new detail that requires some context to add why it's so great:

So the whole thing about My Name is Criminal is that a bunch of the worst criminals are sentenced to exile, right? So, there's a scene where the worst of them are gathered up, and then the worst of the worst are called up to go first. The crowd gets dinky folding chairs, and when their name gets called, it's tacitly understood that they step up and sit in basically a throne closer to the stage.

The new addition is: when Rat gets called up, she just drags her folding chair with her and sits in that.

Which does so much for the scene:

It's just funny because Rat is such a gremlin

It subtly shows that she defies directives you didn't even notice were there

It actually foreshadows a completely pointless reveal two books from now where she admits one of her many other criminal identities was the weirdo who stole chairs just for giggles

It enables her to sit closer to Vici (who's in a throne) than anybody else, showing how attached she's gotten so Vici's imminent betray will be all the stronger

Most importantly, I'm actually acknowledging how Eli is an unexpected late entry so there wasn't a throne ready for him. The fact that Rat forfeits hers allows him to have one. In a few hours, she'll give up her whole plan of going it alone to accept his help during the exile, and this moment already signifies that it's Rat's defiance that allows Eli to be included. Your honor I love them

[jj-shubert-writes]

Eli sits next to me, one hand around me so I can’t fall back into the water. I’m soaked and cold and therefore gross—and I have a power where a tap of my finger destroyed an oceanwide force field. But he doesn’t flinch. “You’re really not scared of me,” I mutter, huddling by this detail like it’s a warm fire. “No.” There’s a pause as people shuffle closer, congratulating us on making it, saying things about where we are. Eli lowers his voice just for me. “…Should I be…?” I think of all the warnings they’ve given him about me, the ways I’ve lived up to the legend for better or for worse, the times they’ve ragged on him for being too naïve. “No. You shouldn’t be.”

It took a little over a month to revise book 1. It's taken about two and a half months to do book 2.

I'm worried about how long I can sustain this project, and I'm thinking about taking a break and working on something else for a while. But I did do it. My Name is Runaway is about 20k words lighter. It's sharper and cuts to the deeper problems surrounding the characters faster. The characters have clearer development, especially the ones who were set up to be the bad guys last book.

This garbage cleans up nice.

[jj-shubert-writes]

“The drones are dropping something,” Eli gasps, twisted back in the passenger seat to watch. I flail a hand at him. “You’re not supposed to watch! It only looks cool if you drive away from the explosions without looking at them.” “I don’t want to look cool. I want to see the explosions,” Eli says. My rearview mirror goes orange. I sigh. And I jam my fingers on the buttons to roll down the windows and I pull the lever to lock the speed. Eli and I lean out the windows and stare back at the fiery explosion like total losers. It’s awesome.

I have been waiting to write this moment for MONTHS!

I cut 17,000 words from this beast. Mostly the bloated infodumping at the beginning and the bloated action sequence at the end. Not sure if it makes the end fall flat, but I like it. I love the clearer character developments and sharper plot.

Most importantly, it sets up a character dynamic that really helps me realize why Rat and Eli work. For completely different reasons, these two are seen at the start as mysterious threats, and the more you learn about them, the more it makes sense to be afraid of them. But instead of fear, Rat addresses Eli playfully, in that casual way that is absent of fear. And he eventually starts to feel comfortable enough to reciprocate in a way that Rat's old (crime) partner, Vici, never did. That creates a trust which only opens up doorways to even darker secrets that will continue to threaten that trust. They are going to stumble, but they are going to keep choosing each other, keep learning how to be kind and stay silly in a world that wants them dead, among people who keep finding (valid!) new reasons not to trust them. They gently challenge each other to grow in a world that has been trying to violently force them to change and conform.

This is only the beginning. It's gonna be great.

[jj-shubert-writes]

I jump to my feet and run for the back wall. “Never mind that—somebody get the button!” I lift the plastic flap over the button and press it down. It clicks, but nothing happens. “Allow a professional to attempt,” Voxel says. The hacker walks over, tightens her ponytail, and starts button-mashing like our lives depend on it.

No context <3

[jj-shubert-writes]

There’s a sound. I glance to the left, then scramble back over by the truck and put myself under Eli’s arm, supporting him the way he did for me hours ago on another beach. He flinches and mutters apologies. “I’m fine,” he insists and tries to stand up by himself. My arm instinctively tightens around him. After what just happened with Rex, the last thing I need’s someone else bailing on me, whether they think it’s for the sake of my health or not. “Nobody’s fine, Eli,” I say and steer us both back to where the other two are sitting. “C’mon and play dead with the rest of us while we wait for Motor.” Voxel and Craw look wary for a second still—we haven’t unpacked the whole thing with Eli almost turning Right Cross into a chew toy yet—but Craw looks at me to make sure it’s okay, then nods and beckons. Eli goes kinda boneless, giving me more work (and hair in my face) than I valiantly bargained for, but we manage to make it closer to the other two before collapsing into the sand.

Rat immediately helping and constantly framing it in narration as possessiveness

Eli having never experienced encouragement or affection from anyone else and immediately imprinting on Rat, ostensibly the worst person possible for him to pick

Her casualness in a life-threatening situation giving her an eerie sense of power

Him thinking he has to make up for his outburst earlier by insisting he is still useful

I promise they learn to all have healthy relationships later but for now I'm having fun

[jj-shubert-writes]

I'm really starting to appreciate Spike's layers. There's a thin, brittle outer crust of "complete asshole" caused by societal expectations that can't hold a candle to the massive mantle of "absolute badass," and then there's this tiny, unreachable, dense core of "actually a bit of a dork"