In honor of not blogging for a while, I'm giving you a tease of my new YA novel, BOOMERANG NIGHTS. Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:
The thumping drone of the Camaro’s new headers oozed ‘68 perfection. Or as sweet as the muscle car should’ve sounded way back in 1968. I downshifted and rolled the car to a full stop at the dark Ocean Street intersection. “Sounds badass, you think?” I grinned at my twin.
Silver cranked up her window and mashed her elbow on the door lock so fast I thought she'd just discovered that sea air killed brain cells. “Someone’s hunched over in the ditch.” She squeezed closer to the center console. “Oh. My. God. There’s a body laying down there, too.” Alarm piggybacked on her shaky voice.
I rammed the gearshift in park and reached to unbuckle my racing harness.
She swung her head in my direction, her hand gripping mine before I unlatched the buckle. “You’re not going out there! Let’s just go.”
The streetlight was toast, making it hard to scope out the situation. “Someone could be hurt.” I pushed her hand away and unhooked the seatbelt.
“Call the sheriff,” she almost wailed, jabbing her new smartphone into my side. “Lucas, don’t go. Something’s not right.”
Her unease assaulted my synapses, twitched along my nerves. My twin’s intuition was usually right on, where I acted without a second thought. I stretched across her lap to peer out the passenger window. The trench caught a scant glimmer from my headlights, enough to make out the shadowy shapes.
Shrouded in dark clothing head to foot, a small man or woman crouched over a prone body in the shallow, weedy ditch. Cat-like eyes gleamed. Not moving. Just staring toward the car. Staring at Silver.
She grabbed my hand, squeezed my fingers into bone dust. I flinched.
“Hey,” I called out. “You need help?”
“Lucas! I'm scared.”
“We can’t leave if someone's hurt.” I flexed my fingers to loosen her vise grip.
The cat eyes in the trench flicked right, then left. A low keening, like a death dirge from some creepy ancient ritual, emerged from the ditch.
Showing posts with label Teaser Tuesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaser Tuesday. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Teaser Tuesday #2
Here's a little teaser from my current work in progress. For the fun of it, I've entered the paragraph in Nathan Bransford's 3rd Semi-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge. I don't normally enter these kind of agent contests, but something told me to throw caution to the wind and just do it. Check out Nathan's blog and read some of the interesting first paragraphs. At current count, I believe there are over 1,500 of them. Go Nathan!
Here ya go:
"The drag racers hit the intersection and twin sets of headlights flickered on. The hot rods slammed into the passenger side of my Camaro. Barreled through my twin sister. Steel scraped steel, screeched, tangled. The car flipped on its side, bounced and rolled. A strong odor of gas filled the air. Metal burned through my side as if a butcher had taken a cleaver to my gut. Something crushed my left leg and I gasped out a mangled sound. My last conscious awareness was Silver crying through the telepathic static shutting down my brain, It hurts, Lucas, oh God. Are we dead?"
Here ya go:
"The drag racers hit the intersection and twin sets of headlights flickered on. The hot rods slammed into the passenger side of my Camaro. Barreled through my twin sister. Steel scraped steel, screeched, tangled. The car flipped on its side, bounced and rolled. A strong odor of gas filled the air. Metal burned through my side as if a butcher had taken a cleaver to my gut. Something crushed my left leg and I gasped out a mangled sound. My last conscious awareness was Silver crying through the telepathic static shutting down my brain, It hurts, Lucas, oh God. Are we dead?"
Welcome to the world of seventeen-year-old telepathic twins, Lucas and Silver Alexander.
This is a "first draft" and things always change in revisions. So I don't know if I'll stick with this paragraph or if it'll change. I'm working up a prelude to this event and it might end up the last paragraph of chapter 1. Who knows? My brain works in mysterious ways.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Teaser Tuesday #1
My first “teaser” excerpt. This is a snippet of a new beginning I’m contemplating for my fantasy romance. Let me know if you think this works as a beginning or not! Any other comments are appreciated! [Updated 5/1/09]
Ice-cold seawater sprayed Ryan’s face, jerking him awake, dampening the natural fire within him. He felt fuzzyheaded and disconnected from his body as if he’d been portal hopping, hunting a demon. Or chasing another senseless dream. His bleary-eyed gaze landed on an endless cauldron of seething whitecaps. Ryan bolted upright on the lounge chair. A shower of spark erupted from his fingers and fizzled onto the soaked deck. Fire magic flared weakly inside him when it should be all guns blazing. Raising his palm face up, he invoked a fireball, but it quickly sputtered and died. A cold shiver raced up Ryan’s back, prickled across his scalp.
The sailboat bucked and dipped into swells that now dominated the Pacific. Thick clouds had rolled in, completely painting over the blue sky in brushstrokes of gunmetal gray and wet cement.
“What the hell happened to the sun and calm sea,” he muttered, shaking his head out of a nightmare, into reality. Moving his head only served to shoot a throbbing bolt through his skull, as nothing else changed around him.
He jumped up, banged his thigh on the tiller, barely missing his groin. “Shit.” Dull pain shot down his leg. He massaged the spot with one hand while checking his coordinates. He’d never fallen asleep sailing alone, and according to his watch, he’d passed out for an hour.
The compass arms spun wildly as if in a magnetic field. Ryan knocked his finger against the glass. The GPS spit an array of snow across the screen. He flicked it off, then on again to a black screen. “What the hell?”
The sails flapped madly, rigging snapped in the wind. Choppy water smacked against the hull, and the creaking of the boat sounded as if it was splintering apart. The sloop heaved up, slammed down hard on another surge, knocking Ryan to his knees. As he staggered to his feet, a rope of fear tightened around his chest. Slowly, he spun in a circle, taking in the rapidly increasing storm. Not another vessel or land in sight. A fast moving fog rolled in from his left, a solid mass of rain headed toward him from the right, and straight ahead was a mishmash of wind, rain, and lightning.
Something wasn’t right. He’d never seen a squall like this, and he’d sailed through plenty of them. Where was he? An hour wasn’t enough time to sail into stormy weather at least a week off the radar.
On rubbery legs, Ryan jumped below deck and flicked on the radio. Static grated on his jagged nerves. He checked all the channels, gave his identification on each one, waited for a response, and then flipped to the next. In the end, the only answer he received was a dead radio, dead engine, dead generator. Dead fucking everything.
Ryan slicked his wet hair back and rummaged for his satellite phone in his backpack, hoping for one last stroke of luck. The screen was blank, battery shot. He slammed the phone on the bunk, catching his balance against the desk as the boat canted toward port side. The Bermuda triangle’s looking tame compared to this BS. He gained fragile footing on the steps, grabbed his slicker, and shrugged it on over his T-shirt and shorts. For some gut-wrenching reason, he felt compelled to strap on his backpack even though the load hampered his movements.
Holding the handrails, he took the three steps to the deck in one leap. Gale force wind whipped his long hair about his face, rain slashed down in torrents. Sputtering, he spat out a mouthful of water. Shock jerked on his heart. Now he couldn’t see anything beyond an eerie blanket of fog settling in despite the whipping wind and driving rain. Mist so thick he could hack through it with a machete turned morning into midnight. Ryan stumbled across the deck and lowered the two sails before the wind shredded them. The masts and lines swayed with every lurch of the boat. As quickly as he could maneuver on the slick deck, he tied down what he could to wait out the storm.
Watching the world spin around him, Ryan wondered if fate hadn’t tossed him a life preserver. Last night, he’d dutifully kissed his equally apathetic fiancée goodbye following their wedding rehearsal dinner, then hit the lowest point of his life. But when he’d awoken that morning, adrenaline pumped through his veins, and he couldn’t wait to get out on the water. A single puffy cloud scuttled across clear sky as far as the Doppler could predict. While the sun rose over Los Angeles, Ryan sailed out of the bay, wishing the price of freedom were as cheap as cruising into the sunset. Steering course for the wide-open sheet of aquamarine, he’d saluted the pier and didn’t look back. His last trip of freedom before his life spun into a living hell.
Ice-cold seawater sprayed Ryan’s face, jerking him awake, dampening the natural fire within him. He felt fuzzyheaded and disconnected from his body as if he’d been portal hopping, hunting a demon. Or chasing another senseless dream. His bleary-eyed gaze landed on an endless cauldron of seething whitecaps. Ryan bolted upright on the lounge chair. A shower of spark erupted from his fingers and fizzled onto the soaked deck. Fire magic flared weakly inside him when it should be all guns blazing. Raising his palm face up, he invoked a fireball, but it quickly sputtered and died. A cold shiver raced up Ryan’s back, prickled across his scalp.
The sailboat bucked and dipped into swells that now dominated the Pacific. Thick clouds had rolled in, completely painting over the blue sky in brushstrokes of gunmetal gray and wet cement.
“What the hell happened to the sun and calm sea,” he muttered, shaking his head out of a nightmare, into reality. Moving his head only served to shoot a throbbing bolt through his skull, as nothing else changed around him.
He jumped up, banged his thigh on the tiller, barely missing his groin. “Shit.” Dull pain shot down his leg. He massaged the spot with one hand while checking his coordinates. He’d never fallen asleep sailing alone, and according to his watch, he’d passed out for an hour.
The compass arms spun wildly as if in a magnetic field. Ryan knocked his finger against the glass. The GPS spit an array of snow across the screen. He flicked it off, then on again to a black screen. “What the hell?”
The sails flapped madly, rigging snapped in the wind. Choppy water smacked against the hull, and the creaking of the boat sounded as if it was splintering apart. The sloop heaved up, slammed down hard on another surge, knocking Ryan to his knees. As he staggered to his feet, a rope of fear tightened around his chest. Slowly, he spun in a circle, taking in the rapidly increasing storm. Not another vessel or land in sight. A fast moving fog rolled in from his left, a solid mass of rain headed toward him from the right, and straight ahead was a mishmash of wind, rain, and lightning.
Something wasn’t right. He’d never seen a squall like this, and he’d sailed through plenty of them. Where was he? An hour wasn’t enough time to sail into stormy weather at least a week off the radar.
On rubbery legs, Ryan jumped below deck and flicked on the radio. Static grated on his jagged nerves. He checked all the channels, gave his identification on each one, waited for a response, and then flipped to the next. In the end, the only answer he received was a dead radio, dead engine, dead generator. Dead fucking everything.
Ryan slicked his wet hair back and rummaged for his satellite phone in his backpack, hoping for one last stroke of luck. The screen was blank, battery shot. He slammed the phone on the bunk, catching his balance against the desk as the boat canted toward port side. The Bermuda triangle’s looking tame compared to this BS. He gained fragile footing on the steps, grabbed his slicker, and shrugged it on over his T-shirt and shorts. For some gut-wrenching reason, he felt compelled to strap on his backpack even though the load hampered his movements.
Holding the handrails, he took the three steps to the deck in one leap. Gale force wind whipped his long hair about his face, rain slashed down in torrents. Sputtering, he spat out a mouthful of water. Shock jerked on his heart. Now he couldn’t see anything beyond an eerie blanket of fog settling in despite the whipping wind and driving rain. Mist so thick he could hack through it with a machete turned morning into midnight. Ryan stumbled across the deck and lowered the two sails before the wind shredded them. The masts and lines swayed with every lurch of the boat. As quickly as he could maneuver on the slick deck, he tied down what he could to wait out the storm.
Watching the world spin around him, Ryan wondered if fate hadn’t tossed him a life preserver. Last night, he’d dutifully kissed his equally apathetic fiancée goodbye following their wedding rehearsal dinner, then hit the lowest point of his life. But when he’d awoken that morning, adrenaline pumped through his veins, and he couldn’t wait to get out on the water. A single puffy cloud scuttled across clear sky as far as the Doppler could predict. While the sun rose over Los Angeles, Ryan sailed out of the bay, wishing the price of freedom were as cheap as cruising into the sunset. Steering course for the wide-open sheet of aquamarine, he’d saluted the pier and didn’t look back. His last trip of freedom before his life spun into a living hell.
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