A Tale of Two Pretties by Dawn Pendleton, Magan Vernon

screeched.
    “What?”
    “Hopeless in Hotlanta. It’s a perfect blog name. Let’s get this journey started,” she said with a smirk. I couldn’t help but smile back.
     
    Hopeless in Hotlanta
     
    Hello, and welcome to Hopeless in Hotlanta, the scandalous lives of D & M as we navigate the world of writing in the underbelly of one of the hottest cities.
    And by hot, I mean it’s ninety degrees in May.
    Most of our posts will be individual about our writing, lives, and whatever the hell else we feel like telling you about. Occasionally we’ll get together and write a post that will hopefully be witty and entertaining or you’ll just laugh your ass off.
    So what can you expect now?
    We’re both working on our first books (titles and purchase links to come later). In the meantime you can follow us as we make this journey from Hopeless to Hopefully Hopeful.
    We write together. We die together. Bad girls for life.
    ~D & M~
    ***

 
     
    Fourteen
     
    Darcy and Mac’s apartment
    Wednesday
    10: 00 AM
     
    Darcy
     
     
    Truth be told, the only reason I ever wanted to be an English major was because I wanted to be Judy Blume when I grew up. One of my mom’s many boyfriends was really into literature and bought me a boxed set of her books for Christmas when I was younger. The boyfriend left, like all the other ones, but the books stayed with me forever. My worn out, dog-eared copy of Forever went just about everywhere with me. Every random guy I stayed with and every shitty home I’d lived in, Judy Blume was forever.
    Now, finally, I was sitting down and writing, with the actually possibility of being published. Self-publishing was my ticket to finally putting my work out there and proving I was worth something.
    Mac sat on the bed with a giant pair of pink headphones over her ears, typing away on her lap top. She always got pissed off when I interrupted her when she was writing, but I was too excited not to.
    “Mac!” I yelled.
    Of course she didn’t even look up. Her music was so loud I could hear it from the couch across from her. Since yelling wasn’t going to work I decided to set my computer down and actually crawl on her bed. I tapped her foot a few times. “MAC!”
    “Can’t hear youuuuu,” she said, not even looking down at me.
    “I know you can hear me or else you wouldn’t have said that.” I sat up and pushed her computer screen down.
    “What the fuck?” She pulled her headphones off, some old school pop punk music blaring from them.
    “I just finished my first chapter and I wanted to see if you wanted to switch. Like read each other’s chapters and give feedback.”
    She shrugged, pausing her music. “Okay, that sounds doable.”
    “Great!” I crawled off the bed and grabbed my laptop handing it to her and she scooted her laptop toward me as I sat down next to her.
    Mac’s writing style was interesting to say the least. I expected her and I have to write similar stories, maybe both have a bit of romance in them... or something I could relate to, but Mac’s story was none of that. I couldn’t even pronounce half the words and there was something about dragons and mythical creatures in some mountain town.
    I sucked in a deep breath as I finished the last sentence.
    “Blixt you must go to them and find the slayer,” Queen Y’ust whispered.
    I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to say. I guess everyone had their own thing that they wrote, but high fantasy? What the hell?
    Mac closed my computer and turned to me. “What the fuck is this fan fiction shit you’re writing?”
    I grabbed my laptop, cradling it in my arms like it was a baby. “It’s not fan fiction! It’s a contemporary romance!”
    “Uh huh, a British boy band with a dude named Barry Myles falls for an American girl that works at a pizzeria. That doesn’t sound at all like your own fantasy fan fiction.”
    “Fiction, Mac, Fiction. And it’s better than whatever the hell this fantasy shit is you’re writing.