On Tuesday my friend and I went to a book signing with Sara Gruen. If you are saying "who is Sara Gruen", you have exactly the reaction I had when my friend asked me to go. Her most famous book is Water for Elephants, which I have heard of but never read. I went anyway, and it was the first book signing I've been to, and it was sort of neat I guess. She was there promoting her new book Ape House, which I bought to get signed without knowing anything about it. She seemed like a nice lady, and she gave one fan a hug which was cute, but her pitch for the book went something like this:

AUTHOR: WELL It is all inspired by this research facility in Somewhere USA, which is testing the linguistic capabilities of bonobo apes, and I had to take some linguistics courses at York University and everything before they let me go and it was really fascinating blah blah

ME: :D LINGUISTICS! THIS SOUNDS INTERESTING!

AUTHOR: It also explores the crazy way our society treats celebrities, especially those famous for nothing other than being famous.

ME: THAT IS LESS INTERESTING THAN LINGUISTICS BUT STILL INTERESTING!

AUTHOR: Anyway in the book the talking apes get a reality tv show.

ME:

So... we'll see how that goes. David Sedaris is coming here in a couple weeks though and I would like to go to that, since I have... read his books and everything.

Anyway, here's that WIP meme. I am using the phrase "in progress" loosely, and one of them (surprise!) is a collab with goldy_dollar.

1. In school, Martha is everyone’s favourite sounding board.

She’s also their favourite ear, and their favourite shoulder to cry on, and Tish jokes that Martha ought to start an advice column. Friends go to her with questions about boys and school and other friends, all the sorts of problems that plague teenagers; she’s the mediator when Mum and Dad fight, and she’s the ambassador of good will when Tish and Leo scream that they hate each other. Martha knows when to talk and when to listen, tiny tricks of the trade of helping people. She wants to be a doctor, not a therapist, but Martha knows injuries and medicine aren’t just about the physical.

“You’re too nice,” Adeola tells her one day, sitting cross-legged on Martha’s bed. “You let everyone walk all over you. People like you get used by other people.”

2. The flaw in the plan, Rory had realized approximately thirty seconds after he’d last seen the Doctor, was that he had no idea when this was all meant to take place. The 1980s make him anxious, and the 1990s… Sometimes he wants to go to Leadworth and fetch Amy himself. She would trust him, he thinks. He might not be a mad alien with a time machine, but a two-thousand-year-old man made of plastic’s not bad, as far as childhood friends go.

3. They found the TARDIS on the lawn around the corner.

The Doctor slowed to a halt as he stared at it, utterly bewildered. The sight of the TARDIS had always gone hand-in-hand with an instinctual feeling of relief and security, and this time was no different. He’d missed the ship more intensely than he cared to admit. But there was a feeling of dread this time, too; he was certain that if the TARDIS was in Pete’s World, something very bad had happened.

Or was about to happen.

4. "You just... like wearing suits.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. “What, every day?”

“Um... yes?” Rose shrugged. “It looks good on you.”

He stared at her like she was mad -- like she was the one who wore the same thing every day -- and then went back to staring at the fridge like it was some kind of enemy.

5. It wasn’t like he was looking to abandon them or anything – it was just that the Ninth Moon of Astraxa was bloody boring, with not a single alien threat, revolution, murder plot, political conspiracy or black market. It wasn’t like they could expect him to wait there and twiddle his thumbs while they canoodled. He wouldn’t be gone long. He’d be back to pick them up. Amy would understand.

So when the landing went a bit wrong, he wasn’t worried. When he stepped out onto a London street, he was just the slightest bit disappointed.

When he noticed the zeppelin hanging in the sky above his head, though, his jaw went slack.

The first thing that came to mind was, Amy’s going to kill me.

The second thing that came to mind was a name he hadn’t allowed himself to even think in a very long time.

“Oops,” he said, to no one in particular. Then, with a grin, he set off to find Rose Tyler.

6. The Doctor blinked, his mug of tea frozen mid-way to his mouth, feeling -- as he often had, these last few days -- like he was being given some sort of pop quiz.

It had been nearly three weeks since he and Rose had kissed on that notorious Norwegian beach. (Well, technically speaking it had been two weeks, five days and three hours, but who was counting?) Since then, things had been... strained, to say the least. Rose, hurt and confused, seemed to flip-flop back and forth between accepting who he was and rejecting him as a insufficient substitute. Nowadays when they spoke it felt like a test, and the Doctor was terrified that one day he’d fail and she’d decide then and there that she didn’t want him. He orbited her cautiously, constantly searching for the right thing to say or do to prove he was still who she wanted him to be.

He had no idea what she wanted to hear right now, though.

7. The Doctor followed after her, stepping gingerly around fallen logs and hollow tree stumps, detangling his coat every time it got caught on a low branch or shrub. By the time he reached the clearing at the end of the path, Rose was waiting for him, sitting cross-legged on the edge of a hammock.

“Took you long enough,” she teased, grinning smugly as he brushed a leaf off his shoulder.

“A consequence of great fashion,” he said simply, tugging on the lapels of his coat. He shook his head. “Rose Tyler, you are one of very few people who would wander off down an unlit path into an alien forest.”

“I know,” she said with a mock seriousness, nodding. She grinned. “Absolutely incorrigible, I am.”