Two people. Both talkin’. Sometimes talkin’ makes you sound stupid, but they manage to pull it off. Especially the gal with the red hair. Lucinda Williams didn’t have red hair, but people still talked about her.
—Remixing the opening lines of Local Boy Done Gone Chapter 22 in the style of the dreamy non-dreams from L Extreme.
I assigned this song title to this chapter since it mostly features two people talkin’. Two people named Local Boy & Daphne, aka the mysterious redhead. It’s also one of those “scenes in a car” Nate Pepper once pointed out appears in nearly everything I’ve ever written. (Technically this scene takes place in a van, so obviously I’ve evolved past my old standbys!)
A vanful of tidbits:
- Shudicurs hardware store is a deleted idea from L Extreme mentioned in my Lyegue commentary post, sort of putting the books in the same world while definitely not actually doing so.
- “Plungers cause more clogs than they solve” might not be 100% true, but is plausible enough to make you stop and think.
- I dig this bit of uncharacteristic description of the unexplained time-fog: “Ground-hugging clouds with sparkly swirls of condensation grew thicker by the minute, a silent waltz of droplets engulfing us in our tanned scrubbing bubble.”
- “I work whenever duty calls” is a hint to the redhead’s backstory in the JLC Universe. Same with “Are you psychic?” a bit later.
- My general writing process is to stockpile a dozen or so scenes out of order before figuring out how to thread them together and connect the dots. I ended up with a decent sized set of “redhead & Local Boy in the van” and “redhead & Local Boy on a time travel mission” sections to mix and match from. This was a later one that slotted in earlier than expected.
- My go to solution for writer’s block is to write something extremely mundane until it leads me back to the good stuff. “Let’s play 20 questions on a roadtrip” was the mundane starter which evolved into an interesting way to handle exposition. I considered making the 20 questions game span each of the van trips, but decided against it. Maybe I should have tried it…
- In real life, the 5/13/00 Mighty Mighty Bosstones show at the Whisky A Go Go was canceled due to overflowing toilets from a sewer line blockage. I had tickets. This incident gets referenced in the bad concert karma section of Timely Persuasion alongside Black Grape missing the ENIT tour due to visa problems and a Toadies/Reverend Horton Heat/Butthole Surfers show selling out. (“A show featuring frogs, a priest, and a childish insult.”) Now we know why all three incidents really happened.
- The old “no names” stunt from TP briefly returns when Local Boy sees what might be Daphne’s real name on her credit card but doesn’t share it with the reader. (This is how he learned her name when he casually drops it later.)
- I do solemnly swear Local Boy “accidentally on purpose” shoving something between the cushions tying back to his previous use of “accidentally on purpose” describing his wife’s out of wedlock pregnancy was written before the JD Vance couch scandal broke. (The book was released before that was news!)
- Up next — THE LIST! — another recurring theme in most things I’ve written and the linchpin Local Boy Done Gone revolves around. I suppose “A Van & A List” was a subconsciously autobiographical title for Part II.
