I wrote THAT?!?

Here’s my brain editing.

So, Ian has been the target of an unknown killer. Sebastian is a bad-ass assassin on a mission to re-think his life who’s offered to help her find and stop this killer. The killer has been to her house, booby-trapped it, and broke in and tried to kill her when the bobby-trap didn’t work. So Ian meets this girl she wants to get to know a little better, the girl asks her on a date, and Ian asks Sebastian if it would be safe to go back to her house with this girl.

Um, no.

Sebastian says yes!

What was I thinking?

So now I have to re-write that whole scene! I need Ian to be alone with Emily, not for long, but definitely alone. Her house is NOT an okay spot to have her go to. I am REALLY not sure what was going through my mind when I wrote that! And I had multiple people look that book over before I printed it! Everyone missed it? Or they didn’t want to hurt my feelings? Urgh.

Okay. Okay. So where else can they go? In order to re-write the scene, I need to know where to send my two characters.

They can’t stay at Sebastian’s place for their date. Ian wants to get a little closer to Emily, she wants privacy. Out for drinks is out. Ditto movie or dinner. I suppose they could start there, then go for more privacy. Not like you don’t spot the occasional couple smooching behind a bar . . . hm.

All right. So they go for drinks, maybe just down the block from Sebastian’s penthouse. He lives in a fancy-ass neighborhood. There’ll be a nice martini bar nearby. He’ll be close, the killer assumedly doesn’t know where Sebastian lives and won’t be looking for Ian in his neighborhood. Both he and Ian will assume that’s safe enough. Realistically, this time. Ian and Emily need to not be gone for too terribly long, so maybe Emily can come on a little hot and heavy, and they can skip drinks and go straight for necking behind the bar.

Yes. I think this can work. Emily has already sort of come onto Ian a little heavy, so I don’t need to back up and add that in. It’s already happened and will be believable. Ian won’t ask to go too far away, so Sebastian will say he thinks it’s safe as long as she keeps her eyes open and calls instantly if there’s trouble. (I had to give all my characters cell phones. I originally wrote this book in the late nineties, when not everyone had a cell.) Sebastian might even hope that something does happen, since he’s hit a wall finding the killer and is contemplating using Ian as bait but feels uneasy asking her to do it. If she goes out with Emily, the killer spots her, she calls for help, Sebastian is close, he can come to the rescue and doesn’t have to ask her to play bait.

I like it.

All right. Back to work.

Thanks for letting me work this out!

Oh, and if you spot something dumb in one of my stories, PLEASE point it out! If Sebastian does something senseless, how can I sell the idea that he’s seriously bad-ass? And if he’s not all that bad-ass, how can the bad guy who’s outwitting him look all that great? And if my bad guy doesn’t look all that scary, what the hell is the point? I’m left with a couple of vampires freaking out over nothing. And who cares about that?