Spanner Chapter 9: The Girl You Want (Revision 4)

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 9: The Girl You Want (Revision 4)

The first day of college for the Bangor High tutors, complete with a riot, courtesy of SPEC chairman Ross himself. There’s trouble back at the high school, too; the mean kids take advantage of the tutors’ absence, only to find that the “lesser” kids are tired of being bullied; the Student Union shows its teeth for the first time.

The first day that Shira and Leila are a full-fledged couple. But two police agents, one mad and disgraced, the other entangled with both, try to keep them away from each other by revealing their dark past. They have other ideas, though, and let the violent Corporate to whom Leila is unwillingly engaged know in the most effective way possible...

Either for Shira and Leila, or for society, this will not end well.

It may be that your whole purpose in life
is simply to serve as a warning to others...

Table of Contents:

1. Interlude 6: The Monkeywrench Cometh (September 5, 2012)
2. The Morning After (July 23, 2011, Final Revision 9/6/12)
3. Dead Angel Lives (July 24, 2011, Final Revision 9/7/12)
4. New School of Hard Knocks (July 25, 2011, Final Revision 9/8/12)
5. Nymphetamine (July 26, 2011, Final Revision 9/7/12)
6. Eurotrash Girl (July 27, 2011, Final Revision 9/7/12)
7. She’s My Man (July 28, 2011, Final Revision 9/7/12)

9.4 and 9.5 remain mostly intact from Revision 2. The opening to 9.6 has been condensed, with more revelation and less expository dialogue. New to Revision 4: the Biotron Labs and Touhou Online scenes; the college and Student Union threads. From the Project Notebook: “Mr. Whitmer’s Question” in 9.2, which was in Chapter 16 in Revisions 2 and 3; “Ariel’s New Age Shop” now in 9.3.

Original chapter intro plus revision notes:

Back during JulNoWriMo, I wrote this under a different name. The final title — modified from a band, not a song — fit much, much better, even if it eliminated a chapter title drop (which also happened to Chapter 3), though I made up for it in the final section. The lesson for one ex-Interpol agent and one would-be Navy ship captain is: be careful what you ask for, you might get... something completely different...

This is the last chapter I actually began writing during JulNoWriMo and AugNoWriMo. Everything that comes after this will be new — except, of course, unless I take it out of the Project Notebooks from the last decade and a half. (The beauty pageant scene is excerpted from a longer script in the Notebooks; the love scene and the morning after reappear here nearly intact.) And this is the first scheduled to be published during December 2010 — that is, during NaNoFiMo, when of course I’ll write 30,000 words for the win finish Spanner Book 1.

Second Revision Update: Here’s the introduction to the originally posted Chapter 9, then called “Checkered Pasts”. The “different name” is now the permanent name for 9.4, “Nymphetamine”. Note that I never managed to finish the first draft, since the plot imploded by the time I got to Chapters 22 and 23. First drafts sometimes do that. That’s why we edit...

Shira and Leila are in love now, and the central relationship of Spanner has finally been established. Sure enough, neither the school establishment nor the cops are able to take it well...

Third Revision Update: ...much less Oliver Thorwald, the evil man to whom Leila was arranged to be married, nor her grandfather, Governor Brinkman, the clan patriarch who arranged her marriage. She belongs to Shira alone now, she defiantly tells them, and they can do nothing about it. Leila’s all-consuming love for Shira threatens the entire fabric of Conservative Revolutionary society, and it will only be a matter of time before society fights back...

Chapter 10 →

Copyright © 2011, 2012 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.