Steven Shinder

Lemons Loom Like Rain Trivia

Chapters 28-31

Chapter 28: Caught Candy

  1. I made sure to include a mention of someone else having taken a duck loan. It fills out the world of the school a bit more.
  2. Randy saying he doesn't see himself in ten years is a really important tidbit when it comes to his outlook at this point.
  3. This sentence sounds unusual, but I love how it sounds: “'I merely became, mirror cracking curse spread from flawless me.'” It makes a bit more sense later.
  4. For those who might think that Mathis is Mathias and therefore a vampire, the garlic ice cream getting on him can make one think that he enjoys the pain of the garlic.
  5. I considered having Mathis invite Mathias into his mansion for the first time ever. Candid would've been fooled into thinking she was attacking Mathis when it was actually Mathias. The vampire would've gotten injured and then shooed away by Mathis. As funny as it could've been, it just seemed like too much of an extra step. So I set the stairway steps on fire instead.

Chapter 29: Letting it Out

  1. Given that the moon has a presence at certain points of the story, “Moonlight Desires” seemed like a good choice of a song for Randy to sing.
  2. There's foreshadowing in Randy's mentions of shadows being unseen. And, of course, his question of whether Naomi saw him through a magnifying glass foreshadows the revelation of how he used his own magnifying glass on ants.
  3. I wrote this bit about Mitch before I settled on a last name for him. I had no surname for him, or even for Getrude, Chelsea, and Shelley, in the first complete draft. I also added this bit where he opens up so that he would feel more alive as a character. Someone else for readers to care about. Also, Shelley saying “Hey Mitch” is a subtle nod to Haymitch from The Hunger Games.
  4. During the Heimlich maneuver Chelsea tries on Mitch, it seems that I wrote “once he let go” instead of “once she let go.” I'm sure there's a way for this to make sense. Maybe a reference to Mitch letting go of the possibility of dying? Sure. Let's go with that.
  5. I decided to include a mention of Shelley's major as a pay-off for when Peyton asked about her major way back in chapter 6. Really shows how (somewhat) close the characters have become.
  6. The lack of a full stop after “but some still linger” represents how Reginald's romantic feelings for Naomi have not stopped fully. I have just decided this. But anyway, this was a moment where I felt I needed to show that Reginald is a bit more flawed than he may have seemed prior. Before adding this scene, he felt too perfect to me. Writing this scene was a really good exercise that helped me understand him and Naomi a bit better. And the end result has an effect on Randy.
  7. The first weekend that I was in Brighton, I went to a pub with a basement that was lit red. I think the imagery I used was also inspired by the bloody light bulbs in the Evil Dead movies.
  8. I considered including a school dance where students would witness Stagmantel and Unicoren dancing with each other. I had experience going to Yule Ball each year that I attended UC Irvine, but it felt like a lot of work coming up with a theme and who would dance with whom, and what effect that would have on the story. Ultimately, it felt like there were already so many events in the school year, so I decided to just have Stagmantel and Unicoren share their intimate moment away from human eyes. I think its placement contrasts with Randy's lonely state pretty well, and I used the ring motif to tie things together.
  9. Back when Naomi was MacKenzie, it was Proto-Frederick asking her out, and he was successful. The two of them ended up watching The Silence of the Lambs together and kissed for real. Chronology is the reason I decided to make it not real, as well as get rid of Proto-Frederick altogether. The story takes place September 2014 to September 2015, and having the 25th anniversary of The Silence of the Lambs film, as well as The Walking Dead season premiere on Valentine's Day, would only make sense in 2016. And I really wanted to have the September 2015 blood moon at the end of the book. I briefly considered having Proto-Frederick's story take place in the next school year, having the narrative move back and forth in time. But it just seemed so complicated and unnecessary. Once elements of Proto-Frederick were given to Randy, it made sense for the scene in the mini-theater to be a fantasy of the future when Randy feels rejected. The mention of the camera felt more relevant now that it was repurposed as a little reminder of Candid. For a moment, it seems that Randy is okay with the possibility of Candid being gone, especially with the inclusion of “Nobody to capture this seemingly perfect, candid moment.”
  10. I realized that Mathis would be the type of guy to ham it up and make his own song, “Shits and Giggles.” This is in the tradition of movies that have upbeat songs during disturbing situations, such as the “Goodbye Horses” scene in The Silence of the Lambs and the “Stuck in the Middle with You” scene in Reservoir Dogs. Hearing “Snake Charmer” in the Hannibal season 3 soundtrack, which feels very different from the score tracks, was also an influence.
  11. When it says that Jade is microwaving chips, she's microwaving what Americans would call “fries.” But I can't help being amused by the idea of someone microwaving what Americans think of as “chips.” Maybe that'll be in a later story.
  12. The use of “chicken needles” as in insult is an idea that stemmed from Marty McFly's response to Douglas Needles calling him chicken in Back to the Future Part II.
  13. It's strange to visualize the image of Mathis' arms looking bigger than the rest of him in the mirror because of the piece of glass that has fallen.
  14. I suppose that Candid's escape is like that “Final Girl” archetype found in slasher films. Sometimes the slasher is not killed for good, and there are sequels. I don't particularly like when certain sequels begin by killing off the person who escaped at the end of the previous film.

Chapter 30: Wishing Weld

  1. Here we have “blinded by the blues,” another nice bit of alliteration.
  2. I wasn't quite sure whether a circular saw could cut through a welding mask, but it didn't matter because this is Randy's fantasy.
  3. Notice how Candid is speaking more normally. One of the advantages of a fantasy.
  4. The end of the fantasy is inspired by the Grand Theft Auto games.
  5. And here we see more of what the geese can do. I also made sure to include the word “goosebumps.” It just needed to be somewhere since R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books were what got me into reading chapter books.
  6. Seeing as how Gertrude is disorganized with her backpack, it's not hard to imagine that she would've done goofed when adding friends to the group chat. I wanted to make sure that there was no cliquiness going on to the extent that Randy imagined.

Chapter 31: Crazy Bus

  1. By this point, I'd provided enough backstories for various characters. So I decided to cut off the narration before more could be said about Wayne Watkins. His backstory wouldn't be interesting anyway. We do, however, get some backstory for Mathias in this chapter.
  2. Here, Mathias has been gift-wrapped a bus to make up for his lack of “vampire time” in this story so far.
  3. Yawning can help one cry at-will, but here Mathias is unable to use even that to help him.
 

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