[Follow these links to catch up with the #10 stupid thing, #9 stupid thing, #8 stupid thing, #7 stupid thing, #6 stupid thing, and #5 stupid thing I survived growing up in Texas.] If you’ve been keeping up with all the stupid things I survived, you may notice this time around that I don’t always learn my lessons after the first colossal failure. Yes, I had a bit of a close call with fireworks at the age of thirteen. The difference this time is that I’m sixteen, and I have a license to drive. What could possibly go wrong?
In my defense, most teenagers of my era were shooting mailboxes with shotguns…or smashing them with baseball bats. I was much too big brain to go down that path. Using a bat was asking for a dislocated shoulder or shattered wrist. I mean, there’s stupid and there’s stoopid. And blasting mailboxes with shotguns is petty vandalism. Not really my cup of tea. Plus, unless we drove an hour away before initiating the carnage, we’d probably end up replacing the mailboxes the next weekend when word leaked out who blasted them.
No, no. My version of shooting mailboxes was much more benign, and more sporting! While one person navigated the winding Farm-to-Market road from the driver seat, the person riding shotgun would light the roman candle, hang out the window, and let it rip. The explosion of sparks when an incandescent, burning ball strikes a mailbox or a road sign is something to see. And for some reason it never occurred to us that said incandescent, burning balls could possibly light stuff on fire. Well, maybe this thought did pass through my mind on a subconscious level. (I did learn my lesson!) Perhaps that would explain why we typically took the precaution of firing these burning munitions along the road that paralleled the railroad tracks.
Most everything along the railroad tracks had already been burned, and if we started a fire everyone would assume a passing train had done it. See? Big brain.
Plus, the road that followed the railroad tracks came with the bonus of catching air with three of the tires when jumping the tracks. (Maybe we never got more than two wheels off the ground at once, but it felt like we were flying.) The more I think about it, I’m not even sure these actions deserve to be on this list. Other than being illegal in a handful of ways, what could have been a better use of a Saturday for a group of friends with a bundle of roman candles, a license to drive, and a fondness for creating memories?
We never wrecked. No one was injured. As far as I know…we didn’t even burn anything down. And I’m still a dead-eye with a roman candle.
At the Desk This Week
We’re rocking and rolling now. I blew up a bunch of stuff this week and got in the groove of the storytelling. The episode was starting to get carried away lengthwise, but I figured out a way to speed up the unfolding of the plot by removing the need to travel to an additional location. It can be a bit tricky when dealing with a present tense, first person POV to skip too much of the unfolding story by simply moving characters from point A to point B. At the same time, I don’t want to describe the travel from point A to point B if it isn’t critical action and/or character development. In this instance, I figured out a way that makes sense with the plot to remove the need for shifting locations at all. By doing so, I’ve removed an entire cycle of action/trough in the episode which will result in a denser “lightning in a bottle” effect for the story. By doing all of this, I’ve placed my characters at the beginning of the final showdown with around 2,500 words left to make it happen. By the end of August I should be able to wrap up the first and second drafts for the third season of The Green Ones!
If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…
[Click here to start at the beginning.]
Thanks so much for taking the time to read these scenes of Boundaries, Season 2 of The Green Ones. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from The Green Ones until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 100 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy The Green Ones. Happy reading!