Part 1 - And so we commence....

Dear Shane,

And so we commence this project. Was suddenly gripped by a wave of anxiety this morning about writing the initial email, but that could have been due to the insane sleep (ahem... non-sleep) schedule that I maintained during my time in Berlin.

I realized that along with Antonia Lamb, we will be reading Eileen Dent of the Editorial department at Pyramid Publication. Her red pen scrawls are usually matter-of-fact, but occasionally she'll punctuate one of the type written lines with a little smiley face. Do I choose to ignore the words she has crossed out? Of course not, otherwise why else did I end up smirking at the spelling mistakes made (for christsakes... 'Mecican'??).

I digress - the point is to convey pages 1 through 5 to you, not give you a breakdown on the significance of crossed out text, and my ramblings on Eileen's handwriting. Told in the first person, we're introduced to this young lady as she stands in front of her mysterious aunt Lucy, who is her official guardian, now that both her parents have died (in some unnamed tragic accident in Mexico, or rather 'Mecico'). Our narrator battles with feelings of apprehension and guilt, while standing outside her aunt's farm house in Staten Island, a borough I previously had thought was only inhabited by drivers of giant SUV's, all with vanity plates with almost-clever contractions.

The remainder of the four pages introduces us to a host of characters; from the laconic and inscrutable Chinese secretary (I was secretly hoping for a bombastic and verbose Chinese secretary, but oh well...I can't have it all) who opens the door, to the cleaning lady (also a fellow member of my ethnic group; her 10 words didn't allow anything other than a cursory insight into her character, except for the fact that she serves tea and smiles).

Our protagonist's (I just spent a couple of minutes on g-chat debating the use of the term protagonist, versus raconteur, or narrator) unease and discomfort comes to a head when she finds herself suddenly gripped by a pair of masculine hands and nuzzled (yes, nuzzled). One spilt drink and a stained rug later, it appears that this is merely a case of mistaken identity. Her back and neck resemble her aunt's, apparently, according to this mysterious goateed man.

And just as I am about to be introduced to the aunt (only the dulcet tones of her voice have so far made an appearance), my page ends, leaving it up to you to continue.