WICKED WEDNESDAY
Please welcome Janet Raye Stevens to Wick Wednesday. I love her take on wicked. Enjoy!
I’m from Massachusetts,
home of Lexington and Concord, land of the Mass Pike and aggressive drivers who
rarely use their blinkah, and
birthplace of the Pill and the Smiley Face. My home state is also famous for
the use and abuse of the word wicked.
The word is baked as deeply into our DNA as chocolate chips in the Bay State’s
signature Toll House cookies. We use the word as an adverb, adjective,
occasionally an interjection, sometimes even a conjunction.
I’m not immune to
the lure of wicked – it’s sprinkled into my vocabulary to a ridiculous degree. However,
you’ll rarely see the word uttered in my published short stories and yet-to-be
published mystery and romance novels. I guess I don’t have my characters use
the word because wicked is there in spirit
and intent on every page, modifying every bit of dialogue, enhancing the
narrative, and sprucing up the details.
For example, when
I was writing Beryl Blue, Time Cop, a
romantic time travel set during WWII, I adopted the philosophy of “go wicked
big or go home.” The result is an emotional, bittersweet, and sometimes wicked
funny story of contemporary librarian Beryl Blue (23), who’s sent back to 1943 to
protect a soldier on weekend leave from a
rogue time traveler bent on killing him—and changing history. Beryl soon learns
two things: her soldier, Sgt. Tom “Sully” Sullivan, is more than capable of
taking care of himself and it's her heart that needs protecting. The more time
she spends with the gruff sergeant, the deeper she comes to care for him.
Beryl’s backstory
is one of loss and mistrust. As a result, she’s terrified of getting close to
anyone, hiding her fear behind cynicism and sarcasm. Sully’s funny, blunt, protective,
and wicked tall. And as down on love and marriage as Beryl is. With that
conflict fueling their romantic dance, I had no choice but to go wicked big
crafting their scenes together.
Beryl and Sully
spar and banter and smolder from the get-go, when they meet on a country road.
She asks him for a lift to a nearby town, moments before the bad guy tries to
run them down:
Why, Sgt. Sullivan, I hardly know you.
That zinged
through my mind between the moment he crushed me to him and when he literally
swept me off my feet. I held on for dear life as he leapt backward, out of the
path of the car. Sullivan hit the dirt with a thud that shook us both. I landed
on top of him. The car sped off and we lay entwined in the dirt, shaking,
breathing hard. His warm, tobacco-tinged breath brushed my face.
"Hey,
you asked me for a lift," he said, his voice rumbling.
"Very
funny." I pushed against his chest. "Let me up."
His arms
tightened around me. "Not 'til you say thank you," he said, mischief
in his voice.
"Thank
you?" I tried again to break free, not a smart thing to do. He was
enjoying me wriggling on him way too much. I mean, that was definitely not a
gun in his pocket, and, yeah, he was happy to see me. "Thank you for
what?"
"That
lead foot tried to run you down. I just saved your life."
Pretty sure
that had been a clumsy attempt on Sullivan's life, but I was too freaked to
argue the point. I just wanted to get up. "Oh, all right, thank you."
He hesitated,
as if there might be more to this ridiculous horizontal discussion, then
released me. I stood up as daintily as I could then leveled an accusing stare
at my rescuer. I went from looking down my nose at him to looking up as he
heaved his bigness off the ground. I was struck again by his powerful build.
Oh, who was I kidding? I hadn't lost track of that since I'd first clapped eyes
on him.
And they were
just getting going! Here’s an interchange from a little later, when Sully’s
giving Beryl a ride to town—and also giving her the third degree:
"Are you
here to see your husband or fiancé? Or are you…" Sully gave me a look so
full of meaning he didn't have to say it. Either I was shackled to some man, or
I was on the hunt for one, preferably a guy with some dough.
That irked
me. A lot. "Really? If you think
outside the box, Sergeant, you'll find there's a third option." Okay, what
was that third option? An idea sparked. A brilliant idea. "I'm on my way
to join the Army. I'm enlisting."
"Enlisting?
In the WACs?" he said with some surprise.
Oh. The WACs.
The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. I forgot. Women couldn't enlist in the
regular army in 1943.
"Yup,
I'm joining the WACs. I'm going to enlist on Monday."
One of
Sully's eyebrows quirked—half suspicious, half amused, half condescending.
Yeah, that's three halves, but dang, one little eyebrow packed a lot of
judgmental punch. He didn't believe a word I said. And why should he? It was a
flimsy story, and I was a terrible liar.
Sully gets a
little less suspicious and a lot more friendly as the story progresses. Kisses
are involved. The bantering pair eventually fall for each other. But they’re
from different time periods and can’t be together, a fact that nearly crushes
Beryl in this scene near the story’s end, after they’ve secretly spent the
night together in her room:
He shrugged
into his jacket and strode to the window. "I don’t want Ma or anyone else to
know I spent the night here with you." He winced at the moan of wood
scraping wood as he slid the window upward.
"Sully,
you're seriously not--" He swung a leg over the sill. Yes, he seriously
was. I ran over. "You'll break your neck."
His blue eyes
twinkled. "Would you cry if I did?"
"You
know I would."
He seared me
with a look that made me flush, then lifted his hand and touched my cheek. His
voice went barrel deep. "Marry me."
I went still.
Two words packed with almost as much power as that dreaded four-letter word.
And from him, the man who scowled at the mere mention of matrimony. Was it
terrible that I wanted to say yes? No matter what it would do to the timeline,
or how much it would mess with history. I wanted to stay with Sully. Forever.
Because I was
in love with him.
I blinked,
stunned at the plain, terrifying, awful, undeniable truth. I was in love with him,
he was in love with me. He wanted me, and I wanted him.
But it was
hopeless. We could never be together.
Now, now, don’t
fret. I’m not so wicked I wouldn’t give them their happily ever after (well,
happy for now, since I plan a sequel). You’ll see, when I finally get this
story out into the world. After a wicked long journey trying to find a home for
this quirky time travel tale, I plan to self-publish Beryl Blue, Time Cop in early 2020.
I did, however, have better luck at
finding a home for a character who could be Beryl’s ancestor, the wicked smart
and wicked wry spinster librarian Miss Emily Applegate, star of my Derringer
Award-nominated WWII-set short mystery, The
Vanishing Volume. It’s 1944 and some sneak thief is pilfering books from
the library’s collection bin for the troops. As you can imagine, Emily puts a
stop to that wicked fast. The Vanishing
Volume appears in the library-themed anthology Shhhh… Murder! from Darkhouse Books. Take a look!
BIO: Janet Raye Stevens writes short
mystery stories and full-length Young Adult, mystery, paranormal, and
contemporary romance, all with a dash of humor. Janet has been a finalist in
the Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® Award contest for three years in a row: Paranormal
in 2017 with Beryl Blue, Time Cop;
winning for short contemporary in 2018 with Cole
for Christmas, and this year for her Young Adult sci-fi The Nascent Bloom. She lives with her family in Massachusetts, where she spends her days
drinking copious amounts of tea (Earl Gray, hot), plotting revenge (best served
cold), and creating fictional worlds populated with wicked cool chicks and hot
guys.
Find Janet here:
