So that was a miserable failure.

Hahahaha.

Well, I got about 2000 words done and, to be honest, I've pretty much fallen in love with my story concept and its characters. It's not over til the fat lady sings, after all.

If nothing else, I started a new story. Thank you, NaNoWriMo.

PROLOGUE

The baby was born premature. Sick and weak, the doctors held out little hope for her. Roger blamed God and the government while Mia blamed herself. Ricky was too young to realize he should be blaming anyone at all, but he was old enough to shower his little sister with attention, even if she was trapped in a plastic incubator and he was stuck behind a glass window. It was Roger who stood with him in the hallway during those long, tense days. Only, while Ricky was talking to a baby who could not hear him, his father was unable to divert his attention from the problem of how he was going to pay a hospital, a pharmacy and a flock of doctors for the weeks of intensive, vigilant care they claimed the baby would need.

In her hospital room, Mia could not think about much at all. The drugs had numbed the pain and the truth had numbed her heart. She marked time by the number of women who laid in the bed beside hers, cooing over healthy infants who smiled back and made whole families sigh with infatuation. Even when the sun shone, every moment was dark. Every giggle was a stab to the womb. Every mention of food made her want to vomit, especially on the nurse who was shoving the menu in her face. All she wanted was to hold her daughter and sing to her so they both could know everything was going to be fine.

On the seventh day, the baby’s heart rate dropped and chaos descended upon the hallway. Ricky cried and Roger froze. Both of them watched as the baby and her incubator were rushed to a room where neither could follow. Having taken root in the hallway, father and son did not move. There was nowhere else for them to go. The chairs were too uncomfortable and, whenever they visited Mia, she pretended they were not talking to her, not trying to tell her about the beautiful girl she had given birth to. The nurses did not ask them to leave and the doctors found it useful. Roger was easier to find if he stayed in one place.

A young man stepped around the corner where Roger’s hallway joined another. He was sharply dressed and smiling as though he knew something no one else did. “There is a new treatment you could try,” he said. “Think of your daughter.” Opening a briefcase, he extracted a folder and offered it to Roger. The data, proof and costs were all listed on a sheet of stark white paper. At the bottom there was a name and an organization. Peter Johnson, M.D. and New Life Laboratories were promising to save this baby in exchange for constant evaluation. She would live in his lab and her family could come visit. It wasn’t ideal, but Roger’s debts to the hospital would be covered and at least the baby would be alive.

Roger hated Dr. Johnson and his leather briefcase. He hated the way this mere boy reeked of money and privilege. He hated how he had no choice but to listen to an explanation full of words he did not understand. His hatred extended to the pen with which he signed the contract, to the paper on which it was printed. Finally, he hated himself for not being stronger, smarter and wealthier. Had he been a better man, maybe he could have bought a house further away from the contamination site, where tiny compounds invisible to the human eye could not crawl into bed with him and his wife and destroy the things that were supposed to make them happy.

The baby was transferred in the middle of the night. None of the doctors knew, but another infant replaced her soon enough that they did not have time to wonder. Roger and Mia did not know either, but they wondered. And they screamed and called for help. The police did everything they could to find her. Statistics for the successful return of snatched children were not encouraging. After a while, the baby became another statistic proving that the local authorities were ineffective.

Mia never forgave Roger and Roger never forgave himself. For an entire year they hated and blamed each other and themselves in the same house until sleeping fifty feet apart was no longer a great enough distance. Neither wanted to keep the house as part of the divorce settlement, so they sold it, split the profit, and divided their family.

From Kansas, Mia flew to California and took Ricky with her. Roger died of cancer in Wichita at 43 years of age like most of his coworkers had the decade before him and would throughout the decade after. Mia married a millionaire and had enough children that she no longer needed to care about her first two. This was a good thing because, when he turned 18, Rick disappeared from Pasadena of his own freewill, finally old enough to split away from all that remained of his old family. Mia did not cry this time. Though her heart grew a little number when she realized Rick was never coming back, she welcomed the natural relief and promised to take fewer painkillers out of gratitude.

In their own way, each of them forgot the baby. They hoped she was dead but silently feared she was still alive. Abandoning her seemed to hurt less than remembering her. None of them wanted to spend their life in pain, so it came to pretending she had never been born, never existed, never more than a fleeting thought that all couples have when their first child starts walking.

The baby forgave them. Eventually, she even thanked them. For all of their sacrifice and suffering, they gave her life.

Why can't i give this post a title? Yo, Blogger, what's with sucking?

Anyways...

Did you know, people have already started this novel writing thing? How crazy is that?

I need to write at least 1667 words a day to get to 50,000 by the end of the month.

As the priest from Beetlejuice would say... piece of cake. Piece of crumb cake.

Well, wish me luck. I'll be using this blog to post excerpts when I feel like it and write about the process of writing. Check back like once a week.

Oh, and in case you hadn't guessed, the novel's title is Genesis. Hot, I know. Trust me it's not for people who are offended by criticism of religion... or the Bush administration... or really society in general.

This is going to be so much fun!