The existential nature of badassiness (Badassitry? Badassitration?)

When I recently read an installment of Metal Mom to my writing group, a couple people said they were glad to see the main character, Anna, finally acting more badass. One person even said Anna should have been more badassy from the very beginning.

Which made me wonder: If this is a story about a woman learning to better assert herself, how assertive can she be at the start? And if she’s bad at the beginning, what does she end up being? Metal Mommy Dearest?

I happen to be reading The Hunger Games right now. The star of that book, Katniss Everdeen, is pretty much a badass when the book opens. But the book is not about how Katniss got to that point. It’s about how she gets to a point beyond that.

You also find out early on that Katniss was not born bad. In fact, flashbacks reveal that Katniss was at one time so timid and ineffectual that she almost starved to death in the apocalyptic dystopia she lives in. She learns to defy the rules and push herself not only to survive, but also to provide for her family.

Stories about characters who overcome self-doubt and gain the confidence to buck conventionality are my favorite. In It’s a Wonderful Life, for instance, George Bailey displays an indomitable spirit all along. But what if he said, on page 1 of the script, “You know, everyone wouldn’t be better off if I had never been born. I’m an important guy!” Who would watch that movie? It would be only one minute long—and a boring minute at that.

George Bailey and Katniss Everdeen have badass in their souls. Well…Katniss more than George. It’s there in all of us. Great characters, though, have to earn their badassity. They have to develop and learn how to use their innate powers in constructive ways. In my novel, Fast Lane,, Lara starts out feeling angry and victimized. She’s badass enough to try to rectify the situation, but following through teaches her how to use her innate powers in ways she never knew she could.

The same goes for Anna Petrovic in Metal Mom. She’s not trying to survive gladiatorial games or save the town from a greedy oligarch or even cut a billionaire playboy down to size. But she is trying to find fulfillment as an artist while bucking societal expectations and rock band egos. And her family—the very people who should be helping her instead of holding her back.

A third of the way through Metal Mom is where Anna starts flexing muscles she’s only just started to develop. Her badassedness grows from there. She eventually kicks some butt. Constructively.

But if she was kicking butt at FADE IN, I shudder to think how much damage she’d do by the time the closing credits rolled. And that would be a different story altogether.

Seven things that keep me awake at night

Now that the three-day Fast Lane giveaway is over, I can get back to pondering the hard questions that have haunted the corners of my reason forever.

What is an extravagance? I don’t know anyone who has even one vagance, let alone an extra one.

What’s the difference between extra virgin olive oil and olive oil that’s just virgin enough?

And for that matter, if you can’t be too rich or too thin, can you be too virgin?

Why can something be god awful, but not god wonderful?

How come knowing jack and not knowing jack are the same thing?

In the prayer, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food,” why is it necessary to say God is good after already saying he’s great?

BTW: The promotion went very well. More on that another time.

ManWARriors, have I got a deal for you

Actually, the answer is yes, I do have a deal for you. This weekend—January 20, 21 and 22—Fast Lane will be available from Amazon for the amazoningly low price of $0.00.

Let me restate that. From Friday through Sunday, it’s free.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Why, Dave?” And the answer to that question is that I decided to give Kindle Select a try. The author (in this case, me) agrees to sell exclusively through Amazon for 90 days, and Amazon lets the author (again, me) raise awareness of the book through the miracle of the 100%-off sale.

If you’re a Kindle Premium member, that promotion lasts all 90 days. You can borrow Fast Lane for free any time.

But for everyone else, this is a limited-time offer. So if you haven’t already downloaded your copy of Fast Lane to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone (plus some other devices), get thee to the Internet on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and get the entire book for less than the cost of the electricity you’ll consume when you settle in to read it.

I’d be thrilled, too, if you’d tell someone else about this deal. You know—on Face Book, Twitter, Linked In, your blog, the bathroom wall at work…whatever. When it comes to social media, I love them all.

And that goes for you, too, ManWARriors. I dub you the Fast Lane Army.

Girls in cars

Academics in Saudi Arabia have determined that women who drive have more sex than women who don’t. That finding adds fuel to a debate in that country about whether women should be allowed to drive. The debate over women voting, on the other hand, is apparently already settled, with suffrage coming in 2015.

Which raises a couple of questions.

First, is driving sexier than voting? I mean, what guy hasn’t seen a pair of appealing legs below the curtain of a tolling booth and wondered about the top half?

Second, do the Saudi academics have a point? The article I saw had no details about the study—and commentary on geopolitics would not be part of ManWAR’s mission statement if ManWAR had one—but a scene in Fast Lane seems to support the Saudi scholars.

A favorite among readers, the scene takes place on a salt flat in Southern California just after Clay invites Lara to drive his $300,000 Lexus LFA supercar at 200 mph. Lara’s exhilarated. Clay kisses her.

Clay’s lips were firm. He had not shaved, and Lara enjoyed the bristly feel on her cheeks. Clay tasted somewhat salty, too, a reminder of where they were at the moment.

But was it THE moment?

It seemed they were heading toward it. This is a good thing. This is the plan. Still, Lara found herself looking down when their lips parted. Not to be demure. She was straining to stay cool. To avoid revealing what was going on in her head—and other parts of her body.

Clay broke the silence. “Well.”

“Yes. Well.”

Clay’s hand dropped from Lara’s face to her thigh, warming her leg as he stroked it through the thin cotton.

“This is getting to be a much more exciting day than I had originally planned,” Clay said.

“What was your original plan?” Lara could feel his gaze, but still averted her eyes.

“Pick up a car. Drive around.”

He kissed her neck. Right below the ear. Ahhh, yes. Lara closed her eyes and tilted her head back to make it easier for him. She felt herself sinking. Willingly. Into the car seat’s embrace. Into a spell. Into the dark corners of her mind. Clay moved his hand along the curve of her hip to her waist.

Lara exhaled and sank even deeper. “What's your plan now?”

Clay tugged on the seat belt and grunted. “Tight fit in here,” he said.

Watching as Clay’s elbow bumped first the shifter, then the steering wheel, then the head rest, Lara could see things weren’t likely to go much further in this setting.

Maybe the hood…

“I think we need a little space,” she said.

Clay nodded and extricated himself from the cabin. Lara watched from her side of the car as he stretched out a Charlie horse in his shoulder.

“So, are you coming over here, or do I have to come over there?” he said with a sneaky smile.

“We could meet halfway,” Lara responded, mimicking his look.

She nonchalantly moved forward to rest her arms on the foxy rake of the LFA’s roof. But the blazing sun had cooked the steel there as hot as a stovetop, making Lara’s next maneuver—a spastic recoil accompanied by a pitiful yelp—anything but nonchalant.

She rubbed her arms where they’d been scorched by the searing metal.

Clay zipped to her aid. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, geez, it’s just a little—”

She couldn’t even finish the sentence before Clay grunted.

“What’s wrong?”

Clay rubbed a spot under his arm.

“Nothing…”

“No, what?”

He pushed gingerly between two ribs. “It’s stupid. I wasn’t paying attention and banged into the door.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Forget it. Let me have a look here.” Clay lifted Lara’s arms so he could see the underside of her wrists. “Doesn’t look so bad.”

“Oh, now you’re a doctor?”

“No. And I don’t play one on TV,” Clay said. “But this much I know: Scientific studies show that simply touching any part of a woman is good for a man’s health. Elevates his heart rate.”

“Fascinating. But who’s the patient?”

“Good question.” Clay kissed Lara on one wrist, then the other. Then he continued kissing her arm all the way to her shoulder.

Feeling better already.

Lara took a deep breath. Clay moved closer until his body pressed against hers. And then pressed her body against the gutter that ran along the roofline above the car door, giving Lara a clear notion of what it must feel like to be branded. She jerked forward, ramming Clay’s nose with her shoulder.

“Omigod! I’m so sorry!”

Clay’s lips moved, but his face was clenched so tightly that no words came out.

“Are you bleeding?”

“No. Just a little bump.” Clay opened his eyes as far as he could in an attempt to illustrate his point. “See? Good as—”

He sneezed.

Lara yelped again.

“That was suave.” Clay daubed Lara’s cheek with his sleeve. “I’ll have to add that to the Pit Stop Blog: ‘How not to blow it by sneezing on your date.’”

Lara burst out laughing. “It is a fun car, but it’s got its drawbacks.”

Clay sneered. “I’ll use that line in my review.”

Lara stopped laughing when she saw a dime-size spot of blood on Clay’s shirt. “You are hurt.”

The sight of the crimson circle made Clay only laugh harder. “I’ve been going through a lot of shirts since I met you.”

Lara gave him a playful push. “So I guess it doesn’t hurt?”

“Pain’s all in the head,” Clay said. “And right now, I’m focused on other things.”

He put his hands on Lara’s hips and drew her to him. She put her hands on his shoulders and turned her head to accommodate his kiss. But just as she closed her eyes, her upper arm grazed that damned branding iron of a gutter.

And she swore. Again.

Clay looked stunned. Lara turned red.

“Oh, my,” Lara said. “Another F-bomb. Not particularly ladylike.”

“What is the ladylike reaction to being burned by a car roof?” Clay checked out Lara’s elbow. “Looks red. Maybe we—”

Lara interrupted. “Should go somewhere else?”

“Good idea,” Clay said. “I know a place.”

Say hello to Anna

Maybe you’re wondering what the man writing a romance is writing now that he’s done writing the romance. Or maybe you’re not. No matter, I’m telling you.

I plan to tweak some screenplays I wrote that have prominent female characters and make them available on Amazon. By “tweak,” I mean doing a little updating, making sure the women are woman-y enough and maybe adding a few details that wouldn’t ordinarily appear in screenplays. Details like what people are wearing (something a screenwriter is supposed to leave up the wardrobe designer) and how characters are saying their lines (that’s up to the actors).

I started writing screenplays twenty-five years ago because I watched a lot of movies, and novels seemed too long and too complicated. I ended up finishing twenty scripts, some of which pecked tiny nicks into the hard shell that encases the movie business. One was Metal Mom, which I hope to have on the bookshelf before March 1.

Metal Mom isn’t a romance, but it is a comedy. It’s about a woman, Anna Petrovic, who rekindles her singing career when her kids are in high school. They don’t like it. Neither does her husband. Even the lead guitarist of her new band, Brains on the Wall, has issues when it looks like Anna’s pushing him out of the spotlight.

Metal Mom was first optioned by a fledgling producer who already had one independent movie under her belt. She started out with micro-budget aspirations and ended up signing Michelle Phillips to play the lead and nearly convincing people with money to finance a Hollywood studio-level project.

A company behind a popular kids’ show optioned Metal Mom a few years later, but that deal didn’t come to fruition, either.

Not that I’m complaining. In Hollywood, Metal Mom has a track record of success. Seriously. Most screenplays get no attention at all. But Metal Mom earned me some money, and I understand why. It’s funny. It’s a good story. It has a female lead that female actors would like to play.

Anyone—male or female—who’s had dreams while growing up in the rock ’n’ roll era will identify with Anna.

And anyone who’s ever been to a movie might like to read a screenplay.

Screenplays aren’t like novels. They don't divulge a lot of back story. You can’t delve into what characters are thinking. And adroit asides in italics are strictly verboten. That goes for anything else you couldn’t see or hear in the theater.

But reading a screenplay isn’t like watching a movie, either. You don’t see what a director, cinematographer and editor want you to see. You see what you want to see. You get to be the director, cinematographer and editor—and the actor. All of the actors, in fact.

And screenplays are fast reads. Theoretically, you should be able to finish a ninety-pager in an hour and a half.

It takes a lot longer than a minute a page to write a screenplay. Or rewrite one, even. But that’s okay, because if I do my job well, your imagination will shoot and show you a movie as real as any you'll see on the screen.

How fast you read it is up to you.