Here’s the current opening of my in-process NaNo novel called Mismatched Irregulars and Seconds. It’s very rough first draft material so be kind.

Never trust a man in a bowtie. He’s always up to something.

One of my mother’s many quirky proverbs popped into my head like a genie released from a bottle. True or not, the bowtie in his thumbnail-sized bio picture grabbed my attention first. The crooked glasses and cheap suit came in a close second, enhanced even more by an antediluvian printer running low on red ink. I didn’t even register the guy’s face other than his skin was amphibian green.

I jotted down my notes under the section entitled “First Impressions—Thumbnail Photo” and moved on to Griffin Spalding’s bio:

I am a number-cruncher for a used car dealership.

A groan accompanied my head drop. Why had no one already fixed this? I mean really. Were there any two other professions to catapult a woman into zzzz-land than accounting and used car sales? How old was this guy? I flipped the page back to his summary stats:  Griffin Spalding, age 35, never married, 5’11”, 165 pounds, black-brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, average-sized Adam’s apple, large hands and feet, hairy chest, clean-shaven face.

What on earth…

“Who allowed you to run with those stats, Griffin?” I crossed off the references to his protrusions and phalanges, changed his eye color to hazel and his marital status to single. The hairy / hairless mentions received double strike-throughs. A vision formed in my head of Mr. Spalding on a date:

“Hey baby,” Griffin said, flashing a massive hairy paw adorned with a gawdy pinky ring. “ He winked and adjusted his bowtie before hitching his clown foot up onto the corner of the table. At that angle he presented a potpourri of eye level bulges, frayed seams, and a thin dress shirt barely veiling the pelt of dark chest hair beneath.

I shuddered. “No. No. No.”

I’m right where I want to be word-wise at a little over 11,000 words. More from this story in the weeks ahead!!

If you want to read more mid-week teasers, click on any of the links below:

http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=216142