I kept this excerpt very short as it comes from later in the book. I don't think it spoils anything, but you may want to read the book first if you're nutty about that sort of thing. Actually, you may want to read the book first just because you're going to read it anyway. Right? The game these characters play, Tichu, is a favorite in my real world. People around me generally appreciated the references. I could not believe the pushback I got from this section though. Trevor requesting suits in a random order was regarded as pure lunacy. Most people thought they should be in the same order on each side and not random. One of my almost-final drafts still has a note from someone requesting I change this scene.
From the book:
Trevor seemed to sense a lack of interest as he pulled a deck of cards from his pocket and stripped off a rubber band. “These are the suits,” he said, fanning out the cards to show the faces. “There are four. I’d like a row of them on the right side of each edge.”
Alison got her notebook ready. “What order?”
“I’m not… uh… maybe a different order on each side?”
She held her pen ready to list some possible arrangements but paused as she considered what to write. She wasn’t going to try to sketch those shapes in front of Trevor and didn’t know what to call them. Descriptive names might be as embarrassing as calling regular suits clovers or shovels. But these were all different colors. “We have blue, red, black and green,” she said. “There are more than four possible orders. Which ones do you want?”
He shrugged. “As random as possible. Except swords, or black, should be first on at least one side.”
“Why?”
“Apparently some people have favorite suits.”
Alison laughed because his tone said that was silly, but she liked the blue suit best. Even though it looked the most difficult to draw. “Okay. Give me four random orders.”
He began to name the suits – by color, thankfully – even though he clearly thought choosing himself was unnecessary.
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