Winner either way, cause your parents are here...and so are we

~REVISED TO INCLUDE PNWA UPDATE BELOW~

Critique group member Melanie is spending the final heart wrenching moments of finding out whether she is the PNWA mainstream category winner by moving her parents. Across country.

Her latest correspondence:

I'm using my mother's computer to email. Her computer won't allow me to access the webpage (you recommended). I'm exhausted and can barely wait to get on the plane to enjoy my first class ticket home. But wait...they are sending my father with me. He will talk talk talk talk the entire flight.

Great.

M.

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The final questions:

• Will Melanie survive her loquacious father on the flight out West?


• Will Melanie win the PNWA contest?


• When she wins, will she thank our critique group for unwavering loyalty and astute recommendations on her lovely historical fiction manuscript?
  

Your turn! What have you been waiting for? Who's waiting with you?

Pictured left to right: Melanie and our loyal critique group.
Photographer: The First Carol

UPDATE SATURDAY 10 PM: I've told everyone what a GREAT critique group I'm in. I couldn't believe I got second place. Wow wow wow. Melanie

UPDATE 11 PM: I've been invited to send the first chapter to four agents. One of them wants me to split it into two novels of 50,000 words each and sell it as YA.
M

[Yes! Wishes do come true - The First Carol]

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After the rum, comes the reality

Melanie is still working on that parental move, as in she's the kid, her parents are moving. She is our famous critique group member. She is a finalist in the mainstream category of the PNWA Literary contest for her historical fiction involving the antics of a teenage (non-mutant) girl disguised as boy on a British brigantine, when the British were not quite our friends, but not quite our enemies, 1800's or so.

Melanie, on the other hand, is totally everyone's friend, and the critique group is concerned about her dive into long distance moving and what affect that may have on her ability to write, especially after we heard that big crash.

She's on the East Coast, by the way, we're on the West.

Thursday 2:53 pm
~from Melanie~

The truck came for the 1930 Buick, but they have the main road closed due to the sidewalk collapse on the next street. We had to go pick up the woman truck driver in town. She parked the huge car carrier next to the Westborough Fire Station and rode back with us.

We had to change the tire and then we put a rope around the bumper and pulled it out of the garage. Very scary because we didn't know if the brakes still worked and it is a slight incline. But they held.

Then we had to back it down the very long, very steep driveway and stop traffic on route 135 while my brother moved the van in front of the car. We had to keep traffic stopped until we could hook the car to the van, using a rope with about eight feet of clearance. Then Lori, the truck driver and my Uncle Jim jumped into the Buick and my brother and I jumped into the van and towed the car at 15mph down Route 135 to Church Street and out onto West Main where we had to negotiate the manic rotary where no one stops.

Terrifying.

And each time we had to apply brakes, with only eight feet between us, my heart rate accelerated to 175 beats per minute.

We pulled in to the fire station and all the firemen came out and told us to move the car up just a little so they could get out if they got a call. Then they stood around and talked and examined the car while the Lori rearranged the Ferrari she already had in the car carrier and made room for the Buick. Because the Buick wasn't running, she had to use a come-along and the firemen and my brother and uncle and I all pushed the car up onto the rear gate of the truck and then up onto the carrier until she could reach it with the come-along.

The whole thing took about 2.5 hours, and then we left and came back in time to run three more loads to the dump.

Yikes.

I'm so tired I might go to be at 7pm.

Oh wait, the neighbor just came over with a blender and tequila.

M.

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I say: Hide the rum. Bottoms up on the margaritas!

But other questions remain...

• Who, actually in their right mind, goes to the liquor store only for boxes? [See yesterday's post].


• Who pushes a Buick out of garage without prior knowledge of the state of its brakes, pushes said Buick next to a Ferrari, and talks to ALL those firemen without ONCE mentioning if they were cute?

Melanie is insane.

I hope she wins a prize. But not for that.

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MOM! If the alarm is going off, it is hooked up

Remember Melanie, winner of the book from Pearl of Carol and finalist in the mainstream category, PNWA literary contest? Well, she is either getting fodder for her next manuscript—I'm thinking non-fiction, it will be all about how not to help your parents move from the East Coast straight into your own backyard—or she's getting a reminder from God on why you should have appreciated the last few parental free decades.

Here are her reports:

Tuesday, 1:04 pm
The fire department is here, checking the alarms before the house can be sold. They asked my mother if she should call ADP first, but she said it wasn't hooked up.

(?)

So, the fireman set off the alarms and ADT called and she can't remember the password. We told them the fire department was here, but now it is too late. ADT already called the fire department, but ADT will not give Mom the code to stop the alarms. There are several alarms going off in every room.

It has been 20 minutes. The fireman just shut off power to the alarm system.

It is difficult to write.

Melanie

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Wednesday 1:32 pm
I've had no time to write, what with the alarms, the fire department, the three trips to the dump each day, the early morning trips to scavenge boxes, the trip to the liquor store to buy a small bottle of rum just so we could ask for boxes, etc.

M.

[Sure, Melanie, just needed that box from the liquor store. Good thing it came with a full case of rum...]

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