Premise of Peep Central: What If?

What if you came home from school one day, and discovered that your mother has disappeared without a trace?

What’s more, what if it’s your 11th birthday, which also happens to be 9/11, the day terrorists have struck America?

Then about four years later, what if your father also disappears, leaving you and your sister a goodbye note and instructions for living on your own?

What would you do?

How would these important events (among other events) inform your life?

Peep Central will attempt to answer these questions.

Working Summary of Peep Central

Before continuing with the planning of this book, I decided I needed to develop a working summary, which will help me to keep this book on track:

Peep Central, a novel spanning about 11 years, chronicles the lives of two young sisters (four years apart) as they raise themselves, without adult guidance, navigating a post-9/11 world in which they must survive day-to-day and mature into young adulthood while also coping with parental abandonment and typical issues facing contemporary young people.

A good summary ought to be

–Short (under 100 words)

–One sentence

–Descriptive of what the novel is all about.

–General (as opposed to being specific)

As I develop the synopsis, I may continue to tweak this summary.

Also, the basic premise of the novel may shift.

Peep Central as the Name of Quinelle’s Forum and the Wayback Machine...

Quinelle's younger sister Qeah is horrified when Quinelle buys PeepCentral.com and sets up her forum using the name.

Possible conversation between Qeah and Quinelle:

“You should have checked the Wayback Machine before buying PeepCentral.com,” Qeah said.

“What’s a Wayback Machine?”

“The Internet Archive. You can check how a pre-owned domain was used before you buy it.”

“But why should I care?”

“Because if a domain name has a checkered history, it might be blacklisted.”

“Blacklisted?”

“Yeah, by Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. The domain name could be dropped from the search engines because of bad behavior.”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with Peep Central.”

“A lot. Peep Central used to be, well, uh, a site with pictures of naked ladies.”

Quinelle slapped her forehead. “Seriously?”

“Yep. But you lucked out. Your shiny new domain name has not been blacklisted.”

“Whew,” Quinelle said.

“But it’s not all good news. You’ll still have to rehab it.”

“Rehab?”

“Yeah. You have to overcome its history, keep the old men away who come to the forum expecting naked lady pictures.”

“But it’s a forum for my peeps, not dirty old men.”

“Unfortunately, a ‘peep’ is also a yukky old man who likes to spy on naked women without their knowledge.”

“No way!”

“Way!”

“My life sucks...”

“Yeah. It’s a jungle out there...But not to worry. The Great Qeah is here to defend your precious forum from the internet crud.”

Although “The Great Qeah” is four years younger than Quinelle, she's a lot more internet savvy and is forever rescuing Quinelle's site from viruses, spam, and other unsavory malware.

Peep Central: New (Permanent?) Title of NaNo Novel

Have you ever experienced an earworm?

You know, those catchy songs that insinuate themselves in your head and refuse to leave, playing over and over.

The only cure: another earworm. Life seems to be full of song earworms, at least for me, ha, ha.

Well, Peep Central is the literary version of an earworm book title.

When I first encountered Peep Central, I knew it was absolutely right for this book; I could not get it out of my head. Unfortunately, I did not own PeepCentral.com, BUT it was for sale on a domain aftermarket auction site, so I bid and eventually acquired the name (this process will become a part of the novel, with Quinelle buying up the name for her forum–more on that later).

An earworm title is vitally important for a young adult novel, but it also has to fit the content of the novel.

So here’s the simple explanation: as high school students, Quinelle and Qeah attend Qahog Central High. Even before Quinelle is old enough to attend high school, she decides to set up a teen forum for her peers at Middle and Central High, which she calls Peep Central. Now in internet speak, peep (n.) is short for “people” or to spy (peep, v.) on someone in a sexual way (Urban Dictionary).

When Quinelle acquired PeepCentral.com, she had no idea about the sexual connotation, and, furthermore, the URL has had a checkered history.

In next post, Qeah will chew out Quinelle for not checking the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) for domain history.

This, of course, causes some problems as Quinelle fights off smutty threads from former visitors to Peep Central, formerly a site of, uh, ill-repute.

This is why I have added a disclaimer on the right sidebar...

;=)
To be honest, when the earworm title first popped in my head, I also had no idea about the matching domain’s dicey history, but, after much thought and agonizing, I decided to use it anyway and will actually work its history into the narrative.

A risk? Yes.

I suspect that those in search of naked women (and worse) will eventually disappear.

I’m hoping the cute birds in the logo will dispel any thoughts that this is anything other than just a clean site.

Have a good day!