Note to Self (and an Excerpt!)

Don't start a blog right before a NaNo event. You will forget the blog exists.

Anyway, I think I'll try to finish camp today. Current Word Count: 45,611

Yep. This is definitely the best I've ever done - especially since the story is half-way coherent. If that's not an accomplishment, then I surely don't know what is.

Here's a brief excerpt, before I go get to work.

       “So you went down to Unverified Reports and fetched the binder?” he asked.

She nodded. “She asked me to get them, right after you left. But I made copies before I brought them to her, and I hid them. That was wrong of me too, I guess, and I should have given them to someone right away, but Mr. Mailer was always so nice and I thought I could trust him. Only, once I saw that you were here I thought, well, of course you would have already given him copies, and so, I think . . . Oh, she will fire me won’t she – and if she doesn’t she might lose her job, and I will be unemployed all the same!”

“Hush now,” he said, patting her knee awkwardly, “I’m sure some other department would take you in. Secretaries are a versatile position.”

Margot sniffled. “You’re a very kind man, Mr. Crosswhite. Very kind indeed. I’m so sorry to have caused you trouble tonight – I know you have very important things to talk about with Mr. Mailer, and I’m – I’m quite distracting you, aren’t I? Oh dear . . .”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he continued to insist softly, still playing with the glass and hoping she would stop crying soon so they could get back to the dining room before anyone suspected anything. But damn it, they would be able to tell by her eyes that she had been crying. He would have to make sure she went and washed her face or something. Lord, he hoped she wasn’t wearing anything on her eyes – mascara or whatever. 

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Ms. Boswell or the Loughford documents?” he asked.

Margot sniffled again, but she wasn’t ducking her head as much, and seemed to have at least stopped shaking. “She called a number of people after you left . . . If she really – if this was really some sort of cover-up, or something . . . I don’t think she was doing it, hiding them, all on her own. I think someone – not you of course, Mr. Crosswhite, or else you wouldn’t be helping right now, I think – was tending to the researchers at Loughford. That is, making sure that their research did not get to anyone else. I think . . . or, poor, poor Mr. Landeck. I think they might have done something to him. These are dangerous people, I think, Mr. Crosswhite. You must be ever so careful.”

Mr. Landeck was Owen. 

“Do you know what happened to Mr. Landeck, Margot?” he asked. 

She shook her head. “But I know Ms. Boswell knows. That’s one of the things I heard her talking on the phone about. Oh, I didn’t know what to do. I should have said something. I should have done something. I was just so afraid. If they can make a director go away, then, then how much more for a secretary? And I was so dull, not knowing that something horrible was going on.”

Afraid that she was going to start sobbing, he gave her the glasses back and told her to go clean herself up and have some of Natalie’s dinner. She agreed, and once he had heard the hall powder room close, he joined the others, who were already well into the pot roast.

And so on.