PNW romance series — working drafts
Pre-prose substrate for the PNW small-town literary-with-a-love-story-at-its-center series. Bible v0, a cold-read addendum, two voice-probe scenes, and the register pivot that came out of the first one. Read in the order below.
These are working drafts. Internal substrate, not for the public — noindex, no sitemap, not linked from anywhere on the site. The byline on the eventual book will be mine; the artifacts here document how it got made.
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Bible v0
First-sketch series bible. Eleven sections, each ending with "decisions needed." Town, pair, voice rules, slow-burn pacing, series spine. The starting point.
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Bible v0 — cold-read addendum
Fresh-eyes pass at full cooling. Five load-bearing finds (subletting word-choice; Mexico City chronology; Wells's past-relationship date; ch 2 meet-cute non-recognition path; June Akiyama residency length) plus three decorative. v0 left unedited; this is a layered correction document.
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Scene — bluff morning
First voice probe against bible v0. Cora, morning after the return — kettle, coffee, the ferry across the channel. No dialogue, no Wells. About 1,100 words. The scene Patrick read that surfaced the register slip.
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Bible pivot
After the bluff-morning scene, Patrick called the register slip — the prose came out literary, not upmarket commercial. Lineage re-aim to Robinson / Cusk / Stegner. Deltas on §1 and §3 of v0; not a full v1.
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Scene — bookstore
Second voice probe, post-lineage-pivot. Cora returning her mother's overdue books; first on-page encounter with Maren Halvorson. Tests whether the interior holds with a second person in the room. About 1,200 words.
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Scene — Salt House
Third voice probe. The meet. Wells at the counter, Cora doesn't recognize him until the hands click the memory and a reach for the saltshaker confirms the gesture. Three sentences of dialogue. Defensive irony rising twice and caught both times. Tests whether the register survives the love interest on the page. About 1,200 words.
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Scene — bookstore working
Fourth voice probe. Day eight; Cora takes the shift Maren offered sideways. Sustained working scene at the press — inventory cards, the lending shelf restocked, a Carhartt customer, a woman in a coat-of-the-same-kind. The discovery, off-handed, in alphabetical position: a folder labeled in her mother's pencil, unbound, named *A Year of Birds*. The staying starting to be shaped like staying. About 1,300 words.
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Scene — bookstore third
Fifth voice probe. Day ten; Cora's third shift. Wells walks in for an order — they talk about the Theroux *New Yorker* piece on the ferry. Chemistry through a third object. The planted *Tillicum Bay Tides* from scene 4 resolved at the door — Wells commissioned it for Cora's mother's last birthday. The folder still unopened. About 1,450 words.
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Scene — Year of Birds
Sixth voice probe. Day eleven; the morning after the third-afternoon scene. Cora opens the folder. Solo interior — no second person on the page through the center — the inverse stress test of the Wells dialogue scene. The thirty-eight-week year. The last sentence Margaret could not find. About 1,350 words.
Decisions needed from Patrick are embedded in the bible at the end of each section. Cold-read addendum proposes resolutions; pivot doc supersedes §1 + §3 of v0. Scenes are voice probes — show, don't tell, what the rules in §3 actually produce.