Hook, Line and Sinker Blogfest Entry: Cleaner Than Spotless
I had such a great time with Roh’s Snowfest blogfest, that I thought I’d go ahead and enter another one! J.W. Parente is holding a “Hook, Line & Sinker” blogfest at his In My Write Mind writing blog.
Here is my entry, coming in at a brisk 541 words:
Cleaner Than Spotless
written by Rob Lopez
Circa 2150, Locus Jersey 3:00 AM
Jovey CR-1477 was designed by Doctor Aryo Cardeñas to clean up after any unfortunate accidents in which the family was involved. Currently, the family in particular was Milas and Sargento Cardeñas, and they had “accidentally” blown away Thander McThewlis and Ednard O’Grady, two enforcers from the McThewlis gang who were trying to lean on Mister Benavedes, the manager of one of the Cardeñas money laundering fronts. The Cardeñas cousins had tried to play it cool, but O’Grady red-flagged on Milas’ See-All® optical display visor and he felt he had no choice but to fire upon them before being fired upon. When the explosive and brief firefight was done, Sargento put the call in to his Uncle Aryo to “send the machine cleaner.”
Jovey crouched amidst the carnage and sighed. “Boys, boys, boys. Have you ever thought of investing in stun guns?” His voice, though electronic, was drenched with disapproval.
Milas’ MAG-N7 .50 Caliber Heavy Pistol had scattered O’Grady’s flesh, blood and bones across the interior of the Benavedes living room, and rent his limbs and head from his body. Sargento’s UZ Machine Pistol, by comparison, kept McThewlis’ body intact, but riddled it with holes and had sprayed a fine mist of his skin and blood cells over the furniture, walls, ceiling and décor. Then there were all the shell casings, shattered glass and holes in the walls.
“Stun gun’s gotta penetrate. Even a raincoat can come thick enough to insulate. And who knew these bozos wouldn’t even be wearing plex? Anyone in their right mind in this business doesn’t walk the streets without wearing plex.” Milas’ heart rate was accelerated, he was perspiring and he wouldn’t stand still. He kept looking at his netwatch for local police alerts.
Jovey pulled a couple body bags from one of the cartridges around his waist, unfurled them, then rose and put himself in front of Milas. He extended a segmented finger and shifted his compound eyes from blue to red for emphasis: “Listen to me, Lieutenant Milas. You did good here. You did what you had to do to protect Mister Benavedes, his family and yours. It is just a little sloppy, so what? The job is done. Now all we have to do is clean it up. You get the big stuff, I get the microscopic. Are we copasetic?”
Milas ground his jaw and started to raise his wrist to glance at his netwatch.
“Communications have been intercepted and teams have been dispatched throughout the city to provide diversions. We should have at least an hour to do this. We copasetic?” He tilted his head towards Milas, pulsing his red compound eyes.
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re copasetic, Jovey.”
Jovey turned to Sargento, who was biting the knuckle of his index finger. He caught his eyes and nodded. “Copasetic.”
“Good.” Jovey handed Sargento a credrod. “Give this to Mister Benavedes and send him and his family to the Lux hotel in Atlanta. All expenses paid. Compliments of the family Cardeñas. If anyone asks, if anyone presses, he can tell them there was an infestation and he is having the house fumigated.”
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Here are the details about the Blogfest, from J.W.’s blog:
The prize of the blogfest will be a $15 Amazon gift card. I’d like to think everyone has switched over to a Kindle (because it’s what all the cool kids are doing…), but the gift card should sate any reader’s addiction.
You can receive up to 3 points for the blogfest. Here’s how:
All points will be randomized into a number generator at the close of the blogfest.
To refresh from the previous post, here is the criteria to submit:
Suggestive topics to consider when critiquing:
- Does the character have a personality I can fall into easily? This includes any dialogue exchanged.
- Is the world around them set up to compliment the character as they’re introduced?
- Are there secondary characters to assist with the hook?
- Lastly, would I read more?
Finally, your sign up link. I hope to see many of you here on February 13, 2012!
Peace and Writing Love,
JWP
So, check back here on February 13, 2012 to see an excerpt from one of my upcoming sci-fi/horror shorts!
So, It seemed like there was a lot of fun humor going on here. All in all though it was pretty confusing. There was a lot of name dropping right up front and so I kind of gave up trying to follow the piece. The thing is that this is something I probably would have enjoyed otherwise. Lose the info dump and contact me cuz I’d read it again.
I’ve tried playing with the beginning to make it less info dumpy, but, since it’s from the point of view (indirectly) of the robot, details, particularly names, are going to be ever present. I might try to switch some of the information into the dialogue, but I don’t want these two guys to feel overly chatty. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the critique!
Interesting to make it from the robot’s point of view. I’m always hesitant when I give computers speaking roles in novels, and you’re very brave to make it the POV character. Having said that, probably the biggest issue I had wasn’t the name dropping or the info dump, it was the passive voice. There are a number of places where you can easily nix the to be and move on to more active verbs (after all, there’s blood on the ground). The nice thing is that it is from the robot’s point of view, there are a ton of details that you can get away mentioning. For example:
“Milas’ heart rate was accelerated, he was perspiring, and he wouldn’t stand still.”
I’d have gone for something more along the lines of (and don’t get pissed cause I’m rewriting a sentence, if you hate this sort of thing, just skip over, you won’t hurt my feelings any): “Mila’s blood pounded through the vein on his forehead, and sweat dripped down his face in a pattern befitting chaos theory fluid dynamics. Still, he wouldn’t sit still.”
Any how, that’s just one stab at it, I’m sure if you bend your mind to it, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Otherwise, I’m interested in where this is going.
Thanks, Rena! I’ll take a closer look and see where I can crank up the observations! Your insight is much appreciated!
I am in agreement with most all the comments so far.
The heavy name drops were hard to read though.
Everyone indicated that this is from the Robot’s POV, but that was not apparent to me. It almost felt like it was omniscient POV. I think that may be because of how the first paragraph started out.
Someone suggested to me today that it was possible I was starting my novel in the wrong place. This may be the case for you too. I wasn’t excited to read more. Is there another place to start that would grab more attention?
Just the thoughts off the top of my head.
Good luck!
I really liked it, and I didn’t find the info-dump to be that much of a problem. Love the premise of the MC being a cleaning robot who works for the mob – cleaning up problems like dead bodies! I’m hooked, I wanna know more about Jovey!
Thanks, Dorothy! I guess it is pretty name heavy in that first paragraph. I’ll see what I can do about breaking it up. This is the beginning of a short story, so I’ve got to get a lot of information out in a very short amount of words, and it’s more of an action and debate piece, so it just might not be your cup of tea, but I do want it to be an all around good story and accessible to a wide audience. So I’ll definitely consider your thoughts. Thanks again!
Thanks, Chris! Jovey is one of my more complex characters that I’ve created in a long time. Can’t wait for the full story to be published! This is one of my shorter info-dumps and I really struggled with keeping it or not. It seemed like it was a problem for some folks, so I guess I’ll struggle with keeping it a little longer!
Would I keep reading? No. Why? Not my cup o’tea – which is entirely subjective based on genre. That is from my readerly pov. My writerly pov says I like how you worked in the world building through the action, versus too much telling. I got a little lost in the info dump of names (since we haven’t met them yes, so have no reason to care). I enjoyed that the clean up bot had a personality and thought it was well written. The mafia wars plot aspects are something that modern audiences can relate to and find reasonable to believe they would continue into the future.
Totally used the wrong url last time. Just correcting. 🙂
Thank you so much for both your POVs, Erin! While I prefer tension and scares in my [sci-fi] horror than gore, I still do my best to honor the gore if it has to be there, to not make it gratuitous and keep it realistic. This is also cross-genre, I suppose, being a mobster or gangster style story, so it has some noir qualities. In the core of my being, I am a romantic, a sap, sentimental, but this particular story turns all that on its ear. And though it’s not your cup of tea, I’m glad you found some things to appreciate in it.