I've Got The "LOOK"! - ziggy zig zag tag...

I don't know who exactly started this fun idea, but I was tagged with "You've got the LOOK" by the wonderful Paula Martin and I know following her will not be easy.  The idea of it is to take my latest work in progress and search for the word "look" then post some of the surrounding text or paragraphs.  Well it didn't take me long at all as the word appears first in the third paragraph, so I thought I'd share part of the opening chapter with you.

Cover art by Su Halfwerk

The story is called Killing Jenna Crane - and I warn you now, you won't like my main character!  His name is Ellis Crawford and he's a very successful fiction writer and creator of the popular Jenna Crane mystery series, which has led to several Hollywood blockbusters.  He's also a bit of a love-rat, I'm sorry to say.  But he receives a taste of his own medicine when he meets the lovely Emily and becomes besotted with her…so much so that when she suggests he kills off Jenna Crane and focuses on more worthwhile writing ventures, he decides to do just that - but with dire consequences.

Here is the blurb as it stands at the moment:

This is not a story about a murder, but a dark journey inside a writer's mind.  Ellis Crawford, creator of the famous and highly successful Jenna Crane mystery series, finds his comfortable life swept away when he meets Emily, his perfect woman. 

Despite his deepening love for Emily, Ellis finds himself haunted by painful memories of a previous love whose heart he broke, and begins to regret his past behaviour.  On top of that, Emily wants him to kill off his beloved heroine Jenna Crane - against fierce public opinion.

But life is too short for regrets and when his own rapidly spirals out of control, taking his reputation as an author with it, where will Ellis turn for help?

Excerpt:

"Jenna Crane, we meet at last - literally!" Anderssen said, his gun pointing straight at her head. "Your last, that is. Too bad you don't have time to know me better."

Jenna crouched against the wall, well and truly trapped, and waited for her past to start flashing before her eyes.  Fear was not the emotion she felt, however.  What she felt, if anything, was anger at her stupidity which had allowed him the upper hand, not to mention the crass incompetence of A.N. Other.  I need a plan, she thought, and a bit of bullet-time wouldn't go amiss either.  Neither seemed very likely to come her way.

The explosion ripped at her eardrums.  She'd forgotten how loud gunshot sounded at such close range.  She felt no pain - absolutely none at all…which was odd.  Anderssen didn't look too comfortable, however.  His eyes slid skywards, disappearing into his skull until only the whites showed as he slowly crumpled in on himself and toppled to the floor.  That was bullet-time; real slow motion stuff.  She was reminded of a collapsing tower block, skilfully detonated to drop straight in on itself, limiting the damage to the surrounding area.  Very graceful.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Jenna demanded.

"Saving your life, again." Ellis murmured.

"Get off my case, you big weirdo!  It's not your job to do that, it's mine.  Yours is not to fight my battles for me - or have some half-wit do it.  I do my own rescuing, remember?  Who fired the gun anyway?"

"I haven't decided yet, but I thought maybe Patterson from EMPA.  He's been on your case since chapter three.  He could be your new love interest in the next series."

Jenna groaned.  "Patterson's a complete dick.  You'd have to rewrite him completely.  And he'd make a lousy love-interest for me.  Stop trying to over-feminise me, will you.  I'm Jenna Crane, not Emily Madison.  We don't work the same way.  Chloe understood me, why can't she?  Now rewrite that stupid scene or I'm going on strike."  She stood looking mutinous and lovely, refusing to say another word.

Not that she'd said a single word in the first place, of course.  Ellis shook his head at himself before zapping the seven pages of rubbish he'd written that morning by hitting Control + A then delete.  His mind wasn't on the latest Jenna Crane saga today; it had taken wing and flown out of the window and across the street to worry about an entirely different problem.

Last but not least, I'm supposed to tag 5 more ziggy zig zag writers and let them know they've been tagged so that they too can share their current work in progress with the rest of the blogging community!  I've chosen quite an eclectic group of writers and I hope this comes as a big, but not unpleasant surprise to them.  I believe they're all working on something rather special, which I'm certain will have "The LOOK"!

Eri Nelson: http://www.dearharts.com/

Terry Tyler: http://terrytyler59.blogspot.co.uk/

Su Halfwerk: http://suhalfwerk.blogspot.co.uk/

Gilli Allan: http://gilliallan.blogspot.co.uk/
Gay N Lewis: http://gaynlewis.blogspot.com/