It’s not quite “The dog ate my homework,” but it does explain why we still haven’t seen Chapter DCCXLIV of Violet Crepuscular’s interminable romance, Oy, Rodney. As excuses go, this one is hard to beat.
It seems her next-door neighbor, Mr. Pitfall, had a quicksand bog installed in his front yard–sort of a fad in that neighborhood. And Violet, just as she was cogitating the next chapter of her classic romance, fell in. Just before she went under for good, Mr. Pitfall came out with his pet bison, Mickey, and pulled her out.
“The experience left me drained of creativity,” she confides in her readers, “so that chapter will have to wait until my senses return to normal. It was only the fourth time in my life that I’ve fallen into quicksand, and it kind of takes the wind out of my sails.”
We are promised a chapter next week, come what may. Really, this is playing hob with the narrative.