Mischief & Mayhem: Assassins For Hire

By the time NaNo 2010 rolled around, I had it up to my eyeballs with mainstream fiction. The political tip-toe of not offending people had reached an apex. I didn’t want to play nice anymore.

I wanted to rip out a raunchy and wrong satire piece and just like that, Mischief & Mayhem were born. I cuddled these darlings and cooed as their naughty-by-nature lifestyle flowed from my fingertips. I couldn’t stop, it just kept coming. Then I reached that pinnacle 50k words and stopped. Stopped I say! Not for lack of wanting to write these two bad boys but because November is a hell month and I had to switch gears to the holidays.

Mischief & Mayhem: Assassins For Hire stands incomplete at 52,923 words. I also broke out of my disdain for chapter titles for this one. Yeah, some of them are just wrong but what I did was take a page out of Chuck Lorre’s notebook. I picked a phrase out of the chapter section and used it. I have titles such as “You’re Out of Lotion” and “Cranberry Sauce”. Trust me when I say I have worse than that but let’s keep the blog semi-clean, okay?

The synopsis:

Killers for hire, no job too big or small for Michael Abandonato or Jerrick Eibenschütz; or as they’re known professionally: Mischief and Mayhem.

As they wait for the money to come through on a job before they off the victim, it becomes apparent their client can’t pay. With no money involved, they release their potential victim with a warning to never speak of it or they’ll him her for the fun of it.

When the same victim shows up on the grid again, and they still have payment issues, the victim gives them an opportunity- kill the person who hired them. With half upfront, Mischief and Mayhem agree only to have their target offer more.

With money over morals being their mantra, Mischief and Mayhem find themselves in the midst of a lover’s spat. It turns ugly when the couple decided to turn the tables on the assassins.

And here’s a sample of the first paragraph:

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Mayhem sat on the mangled couch, the cushions sliced and spayed wide. The rest of the room matched the condition of his resting spot. Clothes, paper, and broken dishes weaved a path from the back bedroom. He leafed through the mail envelopes: a subscription to Playgirl, a cable bill, and a one promise of a million dollars lay inside another sealed piece. He shifted his feet on the quivering body he used as an ottoman and it whimpered. Mayhem rolled his eyes, slamming his heel down on the guy’s back. Across the room his partner let loose with another arc of urine on the wall before it lost its velocity.

Ghosts in the Mirror

Circa 2009, I started NaNo–again–in hopes of coming up with that one novel I’d finish. Ha-ha. I’m funny. However, I did grow on this one. I made a synopsis:

Jeremy Riggs has spent most of his life in and out of the hospital. One month he’d be full of vigor and the next comatose. The doctors can’t explain it but Jeremy figured it out around his fifth birthday.

Jeremy’s soul is too weak to sustain a normal life. He’s become a vessel to young souls who are uncertain how to move on. When the soul merges with Jeremy his body reacts throwing up ectoplasm. The color of it tells him the kind of spirit entering his body and until now the colors have been blue or green.

Waking up in the hospital, a year after being found at the county dump next to the remains of a missing girl, Jeremy finds his newest spirit is nothing like the previous ones. Angry with a will to use their host to find their killer, Jeremy must fight for control of his body. To make matters worse, the police seem to be very interested in how he knew the girl’s exact location at the dump.

Ghosts in the Mirror stands at 57,908 words. At first I thought about making names for each chapters, the first being called Wake Up, Sunshine. I dropped the idea. Coming up with a title for a book, IMO, was hard enough. To have to make one that fit every chapter? No, thanks. I wasn’t interested.

I hope to have this at my current project from start to finish. A new territory for me, I decided to make it Young Adult. Specifically, my son’s age at the time.

Yes. I tested each completed chapter on him and he loved it. Children are easily amused, aren’t they? My standards, however, are a little higher but I have to watch the lingo. Big, fancy words might work for adults but the KISS method works better for the youngins. I don’t agree with that but that’s the way it is.

This is the opening paragraph of the original draft. The current edit looks nothing like this (thank gawd):

—-

The sound of steady blips filled the darkened room. Sitting beside Jeremy, Romy held his hand like she’d done for the past year hoping that he wakes up. The constant anxiety that this time he would slip away caused a tear to roll down her cheek again. This, by far, was the longest time he’d been in this state and his condition never got better when he did wake from this. Over the years, it got worse.

Once a Thief

Originally titled The Ones You Leave Behind, This one is also the second in the series totaling 54,822 words and was my 2008 NaNo project. The first in the series, Triggers, totals 29,110 words and also dates back to my 1987 days (See:drivel).

Again, I didn’t make a synopsis for this one so I’ll summarize:

Adrian Santiago, after a long stint in rehab for drug abuse instead of spending more time in prison, he’s out on parole and must stay clean to keep his feet on the street instead in a cell at Riker’s. Working at the same warehouse of his Uncle–who Adrian believes dead. He should be, right? Adrian did put a couple of bullets in him to make sure.

Never good at anything past criminal activities, he helps a person he only knows as ‘Ghost’ to cripple the operations of suspected drug traffikers. Considering his mother died of drugs and his struggle to stay clean, Adrian has no problem doing this. Things heat up when Detective Humkle comes sniffing around trying to find something dirty on Adrian’s employer–Severino Castrilli.

Etc..etc…. Another mainstream action/thriller type. It has potential. I just hesitate in finishing it when the first one isn’t complete. I have a general outline for both but they need a good scrubbing.

I’ll get back to this one another time. Adrian was one of the first character I ever created. A messed up kid always in trouble with a mother that bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend to feed her drug habit. I think the character has depth.

But what do I know, right?

Here’s the opening paragraph to laugh at. Trust me when I say it used to have more purple than Barney at first, if you know what I mean.

—-

Adrian stood on the corner leaning against the street light pole. He’d pressed the crosswalk button several times but never crossed, much to the annoyance of the heavy traffic flow. The smoke from his cigarette hung in the air and blended with his crystallized breath. He flexed his fingers, trying to gain some warmth back into his fingertips. Most of people out tonight had the sense to bundle up but Adrian never much cared for the bulk of a winter jacket, preferring a knit cap and a hooded zip-up sweatshirt. He scowled, dropping the cigarette to the ground and crushing it with his sneaker. His past was what had him standing on a corner watching the sky shimmer in the dark of night as the clouds threatened another few inches of snow. He could stare at the eerie glow all he wanted but it wouldn’t accomplish the task that had him wandering out of the warmth of his apartment. Sighing, he crossed the street. He zipped up his hoodie, pausing briefly to give a car laying on his horn the finger.