#like how death's dialogue was always in That Font without quotation marks

[roughentumble]

Excerpt from a fic I’ll never write

just a silly little idea that I couldn’t get out of my head. Can’t quite get it to work right, either, so don’t rake me over the coals too hard for it, just wanted to make it leave my head.

For context, they’re sitting in a tree.

~*~*~*~*~*~

What happens next seems to happen all at once, though, by her understanding of linear time, that doesn't seem exactly possible. They must have an order-- a sequence, her mind insists-- but it happens so fast, everything layering over each other, so all she sees is,

Her mind reels from the input, stuttering over it and rehashing it like a play before her eyes, trying to catch up to the current moment, trying to apply a timeline. Paintings all in a row. Have to get the order right or the story doesn't make sense, so first is,

Jaskier-- he stood, he must've stood, but in her mind it's more like he's crouched one moment and standing the next, the memory choppy, stopping and starting, a flipbook missing pages-- Jaskier is standing, one foot braced on a particularly thick branch in front of them, legs spread wide, stance firm, bow string pulled taught-- when had he notched an arrow?-- mouth pinched from the jovial grin it'd bore not a moment ago into a taught line, all casualness dropped from his facade.

And next must be-- but before the words have even left his mouth, it's like Geralt is reacting to something else entirely, the rustle of the leaves or the inhale before the warning, or... something else, something intrinsic, he's moving like it's telepathy-- but the sound must come before the movement, otherwise the timeline doesn't make sense, so Jaskier shouts, "Geralt, get down!"

And Geralt ducks down low, crouching on the forest floor,

and the arrow flies, straight and true,

zwip, right by her ear, she could swear, the sound somehow so loud, drowning out the beast's roar,

and then the beast falls over,

collapses on the ground,

the shaft of the arrow protruding from it's open eye socket.

There's a beat of silence-- and suddenly, acutely, she is aware that the moment of silence is this moment, she's caught up, now, and she gasps, breathes for the first time in many long seconds, feels lightheaded and fuzzy and suddenly desperate for air, and realizes that she's arranging that onto her mental timeline as well, so maybe she isn't caught up yet, and, oh dear, what if the rest of her life is spent playing catch-up? What if she never experiences time how she used to again? She takes another gasp in, but doesn't remember breathing out. She makes it a point to breathe out.

Jaskier jumps-- or, he must jump, because one moment he's still perched in the tree, everyone still and silent and waiting to make sure the beast doesn't get back up again, and the next the beast hasn't gotten back up again and he's thumping down against the ground, landing on his feet like a cat-- but she's focused on her breathing, staring right at the blood, sticky and red and spreading, world focused and narrowed so she doesn't even know he's moved, doesn't even look back over until the noise.

"Well," he says brightly, casual as ever, "that was bracing, wasn't it?"

[stisdale]

So many books.

Having a little too much time on your hands can be heaven to avid readers like me. So many books and not enough time, right? But one has to winnow. I can skip most contemporary fiction, being allergic to sweeping family epics, delayed adulthood, and unrelenting despair. This helps, but still leaves a lot from which to choose. Here’s my handy guide for eliminating a great many titles from your list.

There used to be few clues; in 1845, if you picked up a plain volume called Typee written by someone with the unpromising name of Herman Melville, you really had no idea what you were going to get. Every book was a mystery. Of course, Melville wouldn’t stand a chance these days, unless he knew Oprah.

Most authors don’t control the cover art, and sometimes not the title, but I still respond. I don’t want to, but I do. I am a student of fonts; as much as the art, the typeface counts. I’m more likely to buy a book with an octopus on the cover than a shirtless firefighter—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I like octopuses. I read science fiction but I don’t like fantasy, so I can eliminate books with the words chronicles, saga, magic, or scrolls in their (often far too long) titles. Some things you just know; I like poetry, but I don’t want to read a book-length poem about war. I won’t buy an 800-page memoir by anyone.

The blurbs on the back cover (the front cover, if the advance was big enough or the blurber is famous) can be very helpful. I watch out for books guaranteed to leave me “breathless with admiration.” Watch for a few other key words, just in case: “shocking,” “thought-provoking,” “savage,” “raw,” “brave,” “searingly honest,” “grim,” “scorching,” “painful,”  “brutal” and “life-affirming.” Blurbs help me avoid buying anything called a “portrait of courage.” I can usually resist anything described as “irresistible.” A blurb also spared me the book I found at a publishing fair described as “crawling through the black night of depression.” I used to avoid books described as “brilliant” or “a tour-de-force,” but these days that would leave me with nothing to read.

This summary on the inside cover (often written by the editor and out of the writer’s hands) also helps. That’s how I can identify the memoirs in which the writer uncovers a secret from the writer’s or the writer’s family’s or the writer’s lover’s family’s past that will explain why the writer or the writer’s family or the writer’s lover’s family is messed up. I can move on past books narrated entirely by children, books told entirely in dialogue, books written entirely in the second person, and books written entirely in the present tense. I can avoid books about drug wars, drug addiction, drug deaths, drug exploitation, drug violence, and drug gangs.

You got past the cover art, the title, the blurbs, and the description? Now you have to open the book and look at a few pages. This way you can skip books written in collage, found texts, Twitter messages, diary fragments or social media shorthand. Those extra few minutes of skimming will protect you from spending money on books without standard punctuation or quotation marks, books that take place entirely in a coma, and books that take place entirely in a dream. (Though, admittedly, one can’t always know these last two criteria until it is too late.) I was fooled into buying a book in which the narrator may or may not actually be the author and the book may or may not actually be true, and I resent that.

Finally, if you still can’t decide, check out the author’s photograph and biography. Biographical notes can be quite helpful. Lists of mundane accomplishments (“perfect attendance”), quirky jobs (“grouse beater”) or hobbies (“collects toy clowns”) are dead giveaways. Do you really want to plunk down real cash for a book where the author is shown in full profile, staring moodily into the distance or out to sea, is wearing aviator glasses, is standing near a large animal, more than one dog, or a child?

Typee, by the way, was reviewed anonymously by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who called the book “lightly but vigorously written,” and “tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own,” which might be enough for me. I think I’ll give it a shot.