Please submit your best intro for a faux-Neels novel. It can be as long or as short as you want and our only criteria is that Betty Debbie and I get to be the Grand Poobah Arbiters of Everything (a pretentious title but one learns to love it). By our royal thumbs your entire self-worth will be weighed...But this is all for sport (claps hands, rubs gleefully) so loosen up and have some fun! We'd also love a sample title to go with and we'll knock together a fake book cover. Here is another sample intro, apropos of nothing:
Cressida Shiffley wondered not for the first time what the point was of being beautiful and shapely and splendid with it if one's fiance was willing to overlook chestnut hair and large green eyes and a pair of really extraordinary ankles to tell one that one had to be more sensible. She dropped her eyes wickedly to her slim feet and eyed her new Italian calf court shoes with a smile as she allowed Rupert's strictures to wash over her. Improvident, spendthrift, wasteful...She had heard it last week at his mother's house and the week before when she'd worn that amber needlecord suit. Then amid Rupert's second act about sober lace-ups (lace-ups!) she turned to look at the ponderous busts of honored founders lining the wall of the hospital lobby and encountered a mocking stare...
So far, I'm thinking that Betty Tia may have this is in bag.
ReplyDeleteBetty Suzanne, is your name Grand Poobah Arbiter of Everything?
ReplyDeleteOhhhh, more please....surely something is about to blow up or catch fire or perhaps an earthquake? (And remember that ghastly airplane crash? That one really gave me the creeps, Betty rather ruthlessly killed off quite a few in that one -- Henrietta's Own Castle, I believe?) -- Something bad is going to happen to Cressida's new shoes, I just know it -- but Dr. Blanken van der Blankenblanken will be buying her new ones soon....
ReplyDeleteALHC - that sounds like another contest to me:
ReplyDelete"Death, the Betty way." or maybe "The Catastrophic Neels."
Dr. Blanken van der Blankenblanken will never call her improvident.
ReplyDeleteAll those splendid mothers-in-laws in Betty's books (the Dutch doctors' mothers, not the wannabe vicars' mothers) -- not only does Araminta get the millionare doctor, she gets a mother-in-law whom has conveniently moved out of the family home so that the doctor can live there with his new wife and eventual children; gives up her sapphire engagement ring as well as boxes of family jewels; and has given up all her family's antiques for her new daughter-in-law. Wow! Makes you wonder just what our darling Betty's real mother-in-law was like....
ReplyDelete