February Snippetings!

Writing recently has been very very difficult and tedious and confusing for me of late. Partly because I still haven't figured out what to do with my Microsoft Word program and have been making shift with Google Drive to do any and all of my writing, partly because there are... 4 books I have ideas for and have worked at a bit, and hardly a one of them is rearing it's head and demanding I write it yet. Usually my books have a preference. My MO has been (and I assume will be) to work at the several ideas till one takes the reigns and runs off, pulling me in with it. That being said, none of the stories have done that yet, so if this blog has been a little silent, a little vague for some time, it's only because I am in several pickles at once and the brine is rather cloudy.

But I have been wanting to do a Snippets post all the same, so I hope you won't terribly mind knowing hardly anything about most of these stories. Explanation will come along in a bit after I have decided who and what I'm working with.

***

       Baron sighed--at least Callum thought he did. He made no sound but his arms rose and fell with his chest. "Callum pup, I've told you not to think about that yet. There is time."
       Callum felt the familiar anger rising in his breast. It hurt to breathe. "There is not time."
      "There is--"
        "No, Baron. Listen to me: I am fourteen years old."
       Baron's left eyebrow jerked upward at one corner, and Callum saw he shared the fear. "So old."

-Grey Goose Downs

        Baron slammed a fist on the table and Callum's cider sloshed over his bannock. "Your body is crippled, but your soul is keen and straight. Keep it burnished. Bronzed. In fighting trim. And the people will follow you."
       "Like eagles following a dying dove. I see. Well of course that's a marvelous plan, isn't it? I'll strike terror into the heart of the Northlings with my peckish beak and my little wings. They'll cower, naturally."

-Grey Goose Downs

        Callum picked up a stone or two and hurled them toward the path, following the trail of tallow-soaked torches the men had carried, still visible like star-fire in the rise of the hollow just beyond the village. As if the mock the paltry effort of throwing stones at his lot in life, the missiles landed harmlessly a few steps away. Callum buried his head in his arms, the weak curve of his spine providing a shell in which to hide his humiliation.

-Grey Goose Downs

       Callum felt the world wheeling and wondered if the stars had struck the moon and caused the upheaval.

-Grey Goose Downs

      His gaze wandered over to her hands. She gripped her chest-strap, and her eyes were fixed on the road with horror. A glance at the speedometer showed hew as going eighty-five, give or take ten miles. He applied pressure the brakes and watched her relax and increment as if she had been trying her hardest not to indulge in a squeal of terror. 

-No Mere Mortals

    "First of all, about the kid...I know this is going to sound awkward, but is she yours?"

    "You mean to say--coming on the smoking heels of the extensive Wikipedia article you have doubtless scoured--you know I am unmarried and wish to see if I've been dabbling in the fine art of womanizing. To answer your question quite bluntly, Miss Langley, I received Winnie as an inheritance from an old friend of mine."

     She was silent. He wished she'd say something. Anything.

     "Is that legal?" Quiet, clipped question.

      Well, that was a start.

-No Mere Mortals

     Gregory hit hit number one speed-dial and Anders answered.

      "Hello, Mr. Gregory. Do you have her?"

      "I do, Anders."

      "And?"

      He leaned as close as he could to the driver's window, hoping Aura wasn't paying attention. "She's perfectly ordinary as far as looks and intelligence go," he whispered.

     "Why are you whispering?" Anders asked.

     "Gosh, man! She's in the blinking car with me and can blinking hear every word you're saying."

-No Mere Mortals

      In Richmond's book it began, of course, where all things begin. At that precise moment when one has just got accustomed to the idea of doing whatever-it-is one has been doing for the rest of the year and forever an' ever amen. Richmond, in his case, was sitting with his legs slung over the back of the blue sofa, and his eyes fastened on the ceiling, wishing he hadn't dropped that book because now it meant getting up and finding his place again."

 -Gloamingswood

      "Let's think about it logically," Richmond said a half-hour later when the sponge cake had been reduced to a few sticky, jam-spread crumbs on the fork tines. He flipped to a blank sheet in his writing tablet and wrote the words "Finding Baby" across the top. Then, not knowing what else to write, he traced the words, bearing down hard with his pencil."

-Gloamingswood

    "Do you think this is safe?" he asked.

     Jamsie wondered if he could be serious. Was it possible? Richmond--asking such a question? She put her hand against his forehead to check for altered temperature--nothing. "It's not dangerous, if that's what you mean," she said at last.

    "But if it really is a kidnapper..."

     "Then we'll probably join his collection." Jamsie laughed, pleased with her own joke but, upon catching sight of Richmond's grimace, stopped. "Are you really worried?"

      Richmond stopped fully and turned around, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It's a person who took a baby, Jamsie. It's not a joke. People don't do this sort of thing for larks."

    "It probably fell down a rabbit-hole like Alice. Now stop being a sad sack and hurry. The bobbies will have the case wrapped up if we wait any longer."

    -Gloamingswood

breezes from the ever-after

Though it is December--a month not over-famous for having any time to write--I have written enough in No Mere Mortals and Cottleston Pie that it warrants a Snippets Post. I've also given Fly Away Home a total over-haul, which was good stuff too. Adding scenes and what-not. This pleases me, because some months I feel that I ought to have plenty of time to write and I accomplish nothing, and others I have no time, and I accomplish much. This was a month of the latter, as I've said, and I hope you enjoy these fruits of my labors from No Mere Mortals and Fly Away Home.

The monitor on the bed tracked the patient’s heart with a faint beep. The beeping gained speed as Barnaby Harcourt drew a ragged breath. “You’ll…take…care of her?”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “’Course I will, old fellow.”  The monitor continued to beep, the only sound in the hospital room. With his customary chill manner, Gregory took a sweeping view of the medicine arsenal on the bedside table, the IV stuck in Barney’s upper arm, the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the crumpled “Get Well” cards gathering dust—each day more mocking.

-No Mere Mortals

“…I need to impress those lawyers. I want my yacht.”

“Sir! You might do well to remember you are headed to Harcourt Commons to hear the reading of the late Mr. Harcourt’s will—not to go grave-robbing.”

“Anders, I am shocked and affronted. Put it that way and you make me sound a villain. He asked me to take care of her. To love her. I am only doing old Barney the last service he ever asked of me—asked for it three times.” Gregory smoothed his hair once more in front of the hall mirror and glared at Anders’ reflection. Barnaby Harcourt had not died that day in the hospital. Rather he’d lived through two more “attacks” till the last killed him off. Poor chap. Gregory sniffed once for memory’s sake then clapped his hands. “Well, Anders—shall we?”

“Very well, sir.” With his customary limp—courtesy of an old wrestling injury—Anders followed him out to the limo.

-No Mere Mortals

Gregory shifted in his seat, rubbed his hand over his chin, and swallowed. “Anders, is it possible?”

The limo pulled through the gate and crunched gravel as Anders nosed it up the drive. He sighed, Gregory noticed. “Is what possible, sir?”

“To like someone. No—no…I mean, to be fond of someone. So fond you’re sorry they die.”

“I should think so, sir.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?”

-No Mere Mortals

The yacht was his, the fortune was Adrian’s, and everyone else got a lampshade or an acre or two in Alaska.

-No Mere Mortals

“Look kid,” Gregory raised the pitch of his voice and the sharp note hurt Brian’s ears. “I don’t want you. I wanted a yacht. An exotic vacation. Not…Kindercare!”

“She can’t hear you.”

“What?”

“She can’t hear you.”

Gregory licked his lips. He’d paled to one shade tanner than his cuffs. “What do you mean.”

Wrong guy. Terrible choice, Mr. Harcourt. “Your ward is deaf, Mr. Abbot. A complication from a difficult birth.”

-No Mere Mortals

“So what did the virtuous little woman do?” The contempt in Gregory’s tone was plain as a green Christmas.

-No Mere Mortals

“No name, huh?” Somehow Gregory was not quite so astonished as he expected to be. Who would bother naming a child no one wanted? He turned to her now and cleared his throat. “You’re…eh…coming home with me, all right?” The deuce—she was deaf. He’d forgotten that. He felt utterly stupid. Stupid as a barnacle on the bottom of that yacht he should have inherited. Ummmm….he pointed to her chest. “You…are…” he scooped his hands toward the door, “coming…home…” he made his hands into a house-shape, “with me.”  He balanced the point of his finger against his tie before remembering it was silk and the oil on his hands would stain it. The child continued to stare at him, and Gregory was not at all sure his charade had done a thing in making her understand. She didn’t budge. Gregory winced. There was only one thing left—he’d have to hold her hand and lead her to the car. He reached out, took grabbed her fingers, and tried not to think of how ridiculously small they felt in his hand.

-No Mere Mortals

He shifted an inch or two closer. “But just think. Why do we love stories? Why are we addicted to knowing what happened? Because we are part of a Story. A drama. We were made for something more than this—we are always seeing glimpses, hearing news, feeling breezes from the Ever-after. And because we do not acknowledge that we are beings—souls—created for eternity, we are left with an empty ache. We refuse to see our Story and thus we lead empty half-lives, under the shadow of a longing for something—Someone—we push away.”

-Fly Away Home

“But you have to understand my side of things.”

“Do I?” I arched my eyebrows and crossed my arms, wondering if his statement warranted my throwing the salt shaker at him.

-Fly Away Home

“Yes. I will admit my journalistic side got the better of my judgment. A man in love, bored to death with his usual thoughts, and faced with a mysterious woman, can’t help but rise to the occasion.” The roguish tilt to his smile and the way his eyes flickered over me again and again made me weak.

-Fly Away Home

Introducing: No Mere Mortals

Of course it would not be hard to guess, seeing as I nearly handed the news to you on a silver platter, but yes. I am toe-deep in a new novel. At 6,000+ words already, which comes out to about 26 Word document pages. Not an amazing distance into a new novel--hardly begun, really, but I am excited. I put off telling you for a while because I wanted to be sure it would stick. But I really think it will. I have a definite goal in mind for what I want this book to be and that is one of the first things one must have in planning a new novel. Furthermore, I intend to write it, which is a boon itself. So without further discussion, I'll give you a brief overview of the book:

Gregory Abbot is a young man with swag, class, and money. He wears nothing that isn't immaculately tailored, and tolerates nothing less than perfection in his dealings with the rest of the world. When his father-figure is dying of stomach cancer, Gregory promises to take care of "her," meaning the yacht he had often joined the older man on in vacations. But when Barnaby Harcourt dies and Gregory goes to the reading of the will, he discovers he's gained a strange and entirely foreign inheritance: a young deaf girl--Harcourt's illegitimate granddaughter--who doesn't even know American sign-language and who is entirely incapable of doing anything extraordinary.
Saddled with the sudden responsibilities of a father, and scrambling to keep his reputation as a well-known theatre-critic, Gregory hires a girl named Aura Sweeney to keep the little girl and teach her sign-language. What he doesn't know is that Aura only took the job because she has aspirations to be a Broadway star and knew she could get a foot through the back-door if she worked for a famous theatre-critic. The problem? Her voice isn't good enough for a stage career. Gregory Abbot now finds himself surrounded by perfectly "ordinary" people--the sort he's avoided and ignored his whole life. In fact, his whole world is tumbling down around his ears, reshaped by a God he's only just acknowledged and is more than a little suspicious of.

I have more of it planned out, but I'm certainly not going to spill it right now. That would ruin the book for you, wouldn't it? I plan to tantalize you all through the writing of No Mere Mortals. I am already quite fond of these characters. So far I've only met Gregory, Anders--Gregory's chauffer and surrogate conscience, Brian Chapman, a lawyer, and Winnie--the deaf girl.

Gregory has made me want to hurl him across the room many times. He's just downright weird. Arrogant, a perfectionist, OCD about his clothes, addicted to Altoids, and scared of hospitals. He's a total basket-case. I love Winnie, and she's never said a word. It's amazing. I love Anders too, and I cannot wait to get to Aura's part. It's going to be awesome to introduce her to you! If you have any questions about No Mere Mortals, leave them in a comment below, and if they aren't too revealing, I'll answer them in another post!

“What…have I…” he paused to clear the crackling in his throat. “…inherited?”

Instead of answering, Brian walked to a door in the ornate paneling on the other side of the room, and opened it. A little girl stood there, dressed in a pair of jeans and a candy-striped shirt. So not her size. Gregory winced. The child stared at him with the largest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Her lips were chapped, and her hair in a lop-sided ponytail. Brian settled a beefy hand on her hair and laughed shortly. “I’m not much of a hair-dresser, I guess.”

“You are infallibly correct, Chapman.”

“Well.” Brian bent his knees, then stood upright again.

“Well what?”

“Don’t you have any questions?”

Cold. A block of ice between his temples. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Then shoot.”

What,” Gregory eyed the child up and down. “is this?”

-No Mere Mortals