Pay Dirt in Louisiana swamp, New Orleans streets

Another fun week. Pay Dirt, the novelette you’re helping me write, has close to 1,000 Twitter followers. Thanks again for your help! Now, let’s replay what happened this week…

Moving the lighter closer to the chains, Grim found a seam in the floor, then hinges to a door opening to the swamp below. Forcing the crowbar into the seam, he broke the latch. Brown water below the camp. Darker in the center and growing darker. Big yellow eyes in the center.

Massive green jaws lurched from the water. Yellow teeth sliced Grim’s arm. He winced and dropped the lighter. Blind, he swung the crowbar in the darkness. The door slammed shut. Grim waited for the splash below, then collapsed on the closed door, bleeding in the darkness.

"Friggin' gators, I hate 'em."

The next day, Kat and DJ hung out on a bus bench across from Rube Rarick's New Orleans office, Kat on a cell phone, DJ's thumbing through the Times-Picayune.

"How many cabs you gotta rob to get your picture in the paper around here?"

"Weasel-dick Bastard!" Kat slammed the phone onto the sidewalk, before it skipped into the traffic of Carrollton Avenue. Someone in a Prius popped the horn. Kat flipped them off. "Google says he's in New Orleans, we've seen him, but his bitch of a secretary says he's on vacation."

A Tabasco truck hits the cell phone, crushing it like a cracker.

"Hey," DJ looked up from the paper, "that’s my phone."

"Forget it, the police could've tracked us with it anyway." Kat took DJ's round brush from the congressman's bag and twisted it into one of her curls." After we're rich, I'll get you another."

"Well, I found your congressman." DJ held up the B section, a photo of Rarick in camouflage. "It says he's hunting for gator the next two weeks."

"That explains it." Kat grabbed the bag and stood up. "C'mon."

"Where are we going?"

"Do I have to tell you everything? We’re getting a truck or something that'll get us to the swamp."

For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, we’ve got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are giving me hints, helping me create a crime fiction short story in posts of less than 140 characters.

As we write this, you can watch us fail, or join in. Guide my actions, and together we can invent a new medium—a pulpy sort of Tweet Fiction or Twitter Pulp.

Our plot again:  When Wild Child Kat LeRouge hooks up with Bad Boy DJ Ponchatoula, they find out the hard way that some New Orleans cab drivers carry guns. Desperate for safer income, Kat decides to blackmail a crooked Louisiana politician—a scheme that brings this modern day Bonnie and Clyde face to face with CIA Black-Ops Baddie Bobby Grim.

Next installments on Twitter and Facebook tomorrow.

Thanks!