Hello, tumblrians! Looking for someone to lend an ear to your writing? Don't know who to ask to help you edit and revise? No group of talented writers in your area to join? Fret no more.
A friend and I are hoping to start up a writing group run through this blog, and we mean serious business. We want to have members who are quality writers, working on novel- or novella-length works of fiction, preferably in YA and its sub-genres. As always, good writing can trump anything, so if you don't fall into that category, submit anyway, and we'll let you know. Not sure if this is for you? Send me a line. But when in doubt, this is the place for you.
Choosing the life of a loved one over that of a complete stranger is a no-brainer. But what if it meant the death someone else you love? What do you do then? How would you choose?
Several years prior to the narrative, Alex O’Connor’s father wrote an inflammatory article about one of the New York crime families, and the Martellos kidnapped him for it. Since then, Alex has been “working off her father’s debt”—she’s an assassin. Every kill keeps her father alive. Every kill works toward his freedom.
Alex isn’t a thug, she doesn’t enjoy killing for the sake of violence. Her only comfort in the job is that it’s quick. Get the job, recon the mark, make the kill, dispose of evidence—and then get back to college before anyone notices she’s been gone. Oh yeah, she’s a student at NYU, too.
But that simplicity is gone. The Martello family has a plot to take over the business of a rival family, the Corellis. When Alex is given her next manila folder, she expects it to be another fast job, but it’s not. She’s to befriend the mark and kill him only when other hit men are in position to dispose of other members of the Corelli family simultaneously. Her hit? A fellow student at NYU, Mick Corelli. As if that didn’t break her “code” into enough tiny pieces, throughout the process of befriending him under the guise of being his math tutor, Mick finds her out, and steals her heart, as well.
When the Martellos finally send the kill order, can she actually go through with it? Can she really kill Mick? And if she can’t, what does that mean for her father?
What has been described as a mix of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Romeo and Juliet, and The Godfather all in one, A LOVE TO KILL FOR is a YA novel, complete at ###### words.
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2) Just as she’d thought, the picture in his file was a few years outdated. “Alex?” he greeted her cautiously as she approached him.
“You must be Beppe,” she said, smiling cordially.
“Yep. Well—I prefer Mick,” he told her with a bit of a blush.
“Mick? What, is that your middle name?” she said, playing it up.
“Yeah, short for Michelangelo. I come from an Italian family, so Beppe Corelli just sounds too stereotypical for my taste,” he joked.
Alex laughed; she had to admit that, for a mob kid, he had a pretty decent sense of humor about it.
“Cool. Mick it is, then. Well, should we get some lunch?”
“Sure,” he answered. She smiled at him and acted as normal as possible. Eventually, though, she knew she’d kill him, and as such she couldn’t help but picture a bullet hole in his forehead every now and then, which took her off guard.
What are you doing, Alex? she asked herself. You don’t get guilty about this sort of thing. He’s a mark. You kill him, you’re one step closer to seeing your dad again. That’s what you do, she thought, giving herself a pep talk. Shaking her head imperceptibly, she slapped on a convincing smile and kept up the rouse. She was a bit surprised that he paid for both their lunches; “Please, I insist. It’s how I was raised. And it’s only food points, after all,” he laughed. With that, Alex watched him, and he seemed to be looking at her quite often—did he find her attractive? If so, getting to know him would be that much easier, but not getting too involved with a dead man walking would be that much harder.
Over lunch at a table for two, Alex kept him on focus, asking him what previous math courses he’d taken and what he thought he was having most difficulty with in calculus. Soon enough, though, he managed to shift the focus onto Alex.
“So what’s your major?” he asked curiously, taking a bite off a French fry.
“Physics.”
“Really? Wow, you don’t seem the . . . uh . . . type,” he said, looking at her.
Alex shrugged. “I’m clever enough for it, and the field interests me—specifically liquid physics.” There’s only so much blood spatter you can witness before you become genuinely curious in how it all works, she added in her mind.
When lunch was over, they threw away their trash. They stood awkwardly silent, and then just Alex was about to give him a quick “goodbye,” Mick asked, “Hey, there’s a new exhibition at the art gallery. Would you be interested? My roommate’s not really the art type.”
“Neither am I,” Alex said bluntly, but seeing his disappointed reaction, quickly amended, “But I don’t have any plans this afternoon, so sure—why not?” He smiled, and they were soon off, walking across campus together. As they walked past a clique of preppy girls, Alex noticed quite a few of them checking out Mick. Looking at him closer, she could see why a bit; he was handsome, in the clichéd Italian way: dark hair, olive skin—not dark, but clearly not Anglo-Saxon white—and he did have a good shape. He works out—I’ll probably have to use tranquilizers before making a move on him, she noted for future reference.
In a few minutes, they had walked to Grey Art Gallery and started to look around. Alex had to admit, she’d never really gotten the point of these things. Photos can show one side of the world, but rarely did they show the extremes that the photographers were hoping for. She’d seen worse. She’d done worse. She followed Mick around, though, and mimicked his reactions, paused at the ones he paused at, leaned in when he did, laughed, smiled, frowned, sighed as he did. Her father might have been a journalist, but that didn’t mean that she saw the same things in society that others did. Society is what people imagine it to be. And Alex knew from experience just how often people imagined wrong. About an hour after they had arrived, Mick dropped a five-dollar bill into the donations box and they left.
“You’ve never been to one of these, have you?” he asked with a smirk, zipping up his hoodie against the wind.
“Yeah. I have. I’ve just never really paid much attention to them,” she admitted. For some reason, she was kind of worried that Mick would call her out on it—liar, poser, fraud—but he didn’t. He actually smirked a bit, and so she smiled back.
“Okay. Would a cup of coffee be more up your alley? I could use one to warm up.”
“Sure,” she answered, and they set off for a coffee shop about four minutes away. They gave their orders, and once again, Mick insisted on picking up the tab. Settling down at a corner table, Alex took off her hoodie, and she caught Mick looking at her tee. It was a solid color, so there was no need for him to be looking at her chest, other than for the obvious. She was tempted to call him on it, but instead cleared her throat, and his attention was brought back up to her face.
“So, we’ve already established that I’m a Physics major and why, but what about you?”
“Oh, I’m a music major.”
“Taking calc for diversity requirements, then?” she said, playing coy.
“Yeah. Can’t wait to be done with it. No offense, you know. Math just isn’t my thing.”
“None taken.” Alex took a sip of her coffee. “Why music? What do you play?”
“Well, I play French Horn, but I love music in general. It’s just—no one in my family really appreciates the arts, so—I dunno—it just made it more appealing to me, I guess.”
“The artist rebel,” Alex said, smiling.
“Yeah. Sure. Let’s go with that,” he laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m not a rebel, in case you couldn’t tell. Not even remotely close to a revolutionary.”
Alex shrugged. “We’re all rebels in our own way, even if we can’t see it for ourselves.”
“Wow,” he said, leaning back. “That’s deep. Are you sure you aren’t a closet-Philosophy major?”
“That’s offensive. And yes, I’m sure.” After a moment, she smiled, and then they shared a moment of laughter.
Their coffees finished, they walked back toward their dorms together.
“So . . . Um, I know we just met and everything, but, um, do you have any plans this evening?” Mick asked her optimistically.
“Wow, your cheeks are red,” Alex said, rubbing it in. “No, I don’t actually.”
“Cool. Well, would you want to do something? With me?”
“Like what?”
“Hmm?”
“Aw come on, make it worth my time to say yes,” she teased. “What are we going to do?”
“Um . . . geez, the last date I went on was in high school and it involved karaoke in a jazz bar. Um, do you want to go out for dinner? Chinese maybe?”
“Not Italian?”
He snickered. “No, not Italian. Unless you like Italian, if it’s your favorite,” he retracted, hopeful.
“Chinese sounds fine. Meet you at Carlyle Courtyard at 7?” she suggested.
“Sounds perfect. Cool. Great,” he said, smiling, more to himself than to Alex.
“Well, this is me,” she said, pointing to her dorm.
“Okay then. See you tonight.” He was all smiles as he waved her off into her building.
Once inside the door, Alex giggled at how cute he was when he was awkward. And then the realization came back that she was failing miserably at holding him at bay. “So much for the tutor plan,” she growled at herself.
Soon enough, though, her work phone rang with a distraction.
“O’Connor speaking.”
“We’ve got a job for you, if you’re free tomorrow.”
“A job on Sunday? Is nothing sacred anymore,” she joked with Donny.
“You’re good for it, then?” he asked, a chuckle hiding in his voice.
“Yeah, I’m good. I’ll be over to the restaurant in a bit.”
Hanging up, she walked right back out the door and headed for the subway.
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3) I'm willing to be on about 2-3 hours per week. If we all schedule a time to get online, I'll definitely be there. For the majority, I'll put in the time needed to comment on everything thoroughly, so long as it doesn't overshadow time needed for my writing or schoolwork.
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4) My absolute favorite flavor of ice cream is raspberry chocolate chip. If I can, I get it in a cup accompanied with a scoop of orange sherbet.
