Thursday, November 13, 2008

17 SECRET AGENT: Are You Hooked?

TITLE: SOME KIND OF NORMAL
GENRE: Commercial Fiction


I ain’t one to bash being healthy, but it sure takes the fun out of living. My motivation to be the perfect mom starts about six a.m. when I swing my legs over the bed and ends fifteen minutes later when I stumble into the kitchen to make coffee and figure out what I can cook for breakfast that won’t kill no one.

It wasn’t always like this. I followed my own mama’s footsteps for years, laying out a spread that included all four types of meat, and grits with cream and brown sugar if Travis was lucky. But during Travis’s mid-life physical, his doctor told him my daily ham with sausage gravy on biscuits was driving him to an early grave. He slid the lab results across his desk at me, claiming Travis’s LDL numbers were higher than a crackhead’s. I said if a crackhead had my sausage gravy he’d give up the crack and rather die of plugged arteries. He didn’t laugh. We switched to eggs and toast.

Then when Logan was young enough to run around bare-tushed, he developed hives and a propensity for up chucking. His pediatrician pointed to the milk we poured on his Cocoa Crispies each morning. Who the Sam Hill is allergic to milk, I asked. We switched to Pop Tarts and apple juice anyway.

13 comments:

  1. Hooked. The voice catches me, because I can imagine this woman. I've met this woman. I would have to see where the story was going, of course, but it's an interesting start.

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  2. I like the voice, but I'd need to get into action pretty soon to keep going. I know, I know, if someone made that comment about my post I'd scream "But if you just kept reading! Almost...there..."

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  3. *grin* I loved the voice. The grammar killed me, but I think it went well with the character. :)

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  4. I also loved the voice. Keep it up!

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  5. I'm not exactly hooked here... but that could be because of the 250w limit.

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  6. Not totally hooked because I don't know enough about the story, but I like the voice.

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  7. Loved the voice so much I'm more than willing to turn the page.

    I think I know her...

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  8. I'm not hooked by this passage, but I like her voice. Again this may be one of those beginnings that combined with a blurb would hook me in an instant.

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  9. Not hooked, sorry. Nothing is happening. It's an unnamed narrator musing about current events. There's no plot or conflict recognizable yet.

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  10. Unlike others, I guess this voice is too "folksy" for me. But that is a personal preference as I don't really like sort of down home type of reading. By the voice I'm picturing that this is set on a farm in the mid-west and is going to involve a woman recognizing her previously stifled power.

    I sort of don't like this doormat woman. Or the idiot people that are expecting her to take responsibility for their health needs. Me, I'd say to heck with you, fix your own dang breakfast, what are you, stupid? But like I said, that's just me. :)

    You do have an attention to detail that I like, though.

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  11. Loved the voice.

    Need some conflict.

    Her anger at the doctors doesn't do it. They obey the doctors and adjust the food.

    So the conflict so far is just her depression which might make this good women's fiction, but commercial fiction, I think, needs a fast start.

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  12. I liked the writing and the voice but there's no hook, really.

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