Notes for Chapter Eleven

I roused myself from an ice-cream-fueled Labor Day Weekend torpor to write this for you, dear readers, and I hope you read it in a similar pleasant state.

I found this chapter really difficult to write. The fact that Marla ripped off Rondeau's jaw in a cloak-induced sociopathic state has been part of the character's mythology since the first story I ever wrote about her (and that was, oh, 11 years ago at this point). But I'd never sat down and imagined it thoroughly -- how she got there, how she found him, why he didn't bleed to death, what she did afterward. Fortunately I mentioned in Spell Games that it was Hamil who patched Rondeau up after the accident, so I had some sense of where I was going. There has seldom been a less cute "meet cute" in the history of buddy-cop stories (which is often the vibe in which I write Marla and Rondeau). It's a shame we won't get to see more of Marla and Rondeau being friends and hanging out in this prequel.

Only another six or seven chapters to go. Stay with me...

Back to Chapter 11