Snippet Sunday – November 10, 2013

The witch, Hespa, has had Anwar thrown into a dungeon known as the Tombs.  He’s cold. He’s alone. But does he have what it takes to survive?

Did he dare cross the witch with so much at stake? As quickly as the thought materialized, he dismissed it as folly. A man knew his limitations.

An icy chill coursed through his body. Anwar cast off his cloak. His numbed hands trembled as he attempted to warm his arms, his thighs. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, anything to keep his blood flowing.

Then he heard it. The U’rudhene. Its steady dripping into the cells, a constant reminder to the condemned that their fate rested solely in the hands of the witch.

Snippet Sunday – November 3, 2013

When last we saw Anwar, he had awakened in The Tombs, a dungeon the witch Hespa had specially forged for her prisoners.

He winced as his hand snaked toward a throbbing wound on the back of his head. It was wet with blood. Daemon must have awaited his return at the veil. Anwar doubted the oaf had acted on his own accord. His fealty belonged to the witch.

His eyes adjusted easily to the darkness – a necessity in his profession – though, to Anwar, one cell looked much the same as any other, with one exception. Hespa preferred floors of jagged stone to those of packed earth. Unshod feet assured a prisoner’s inability to steal surreptitiously away. Anwar wriggled his toes, tucked safely inside his scuffed boots. That meant only one thing. He still fit in her plans.

Snippet Sunday – October 27, 2013

And we arrive at the second chapter of Once Upon Nowhere:  The Tombs

A foul stench rose to his nostrils, filling his senses. Must. Sweat. Fear. The Tombs, they called it, and rightly so, for few men ever emerged from the dank recesses of Hespa’s dungeon. And those who did escape with their lives pleaded for death in the end.

Anwar shuddered against bone-chilling cold. His limp form, clad in the sodden cloak, sprawled across a stone floor. The length of his captivity up to that point remained a mystery.

Snippet Sunday – October 20, 2013

We join Tori and her mother at the window. Ayn was trying to reassure her that the figure below her window last night was just a trick of the storm.

Ayn reached over and played with a curl that had fallen in Tori’s face. “Even into full-grown men in cloaks.” She pecked Tori on the forehead before rushing to the door. “I’m sure it was nothing.”

But Tori thought she had detected caution in her voice. Like, perhaps, she suspected what her daughter had been saying was true.

Alone once more, Tori turned to the window, but only blue skies and drying puddles greeted her this morning, none of the menace that she had faced only hours before. “He was real,” she repeated, as if to set her mind at rest. “I know he was real.”

Snippet Sunday – October 13, 2013

The storm has ended. A new day arises. Tori hastens to the sill, but the man she glimpsed the night before has vanished. Perhaps it was as her mother said, just a dream. But what if it wasn’t? 

Ayn joined her at the sill, glancing over Tori’s shoulder at the promise of a new day. “There’s no one out there, sweetheart,”” she said.

“Well, no . . . not now.”

“And not last night either. Shadows twist themselves into all sorts of shapes during a storm.”

Tori wasn’t convinced. “Even into full-grown men?”

 “Even into full-grown men.”

“In cloaks?” Tori added.

The smile on her mother’s lips faltered. . .

Snippet Sunday – October 6, 2013

Continuing on with Once Upon Nowhere, I skipped ahead a few paragraphs for today’s snippet. Twelve-year-old Tori, already restless because of the storm, is now faced with something even more frightening. Surely, this can’t be good.

Breathless, Tori anticipated the next illumination, her forehead pressed to the cool glass. For a fleeting moment, night became day. She peered through a tangle of limbs to a patch of ground beneath her window.

That was the first time she saw him, his cloak so heavily drenched that it clung to his slight frame. He stared at the house, motionless, as though he were simply another stone statue in the city park.

The light failed. Tori’s legs were heavy with fear, her mouth bone dry. Her feeble attempt to call her mother ended in a croak. Still, Tori’s eyes remained fixed on the veiled figure below her window.

Snippet Sunday – September 29, 2013

Could it be time for another snippet already? I hope you’re as excited as I am with the progression of Once Upon Nowhere. Here we find Tori Lawson, a bit melancholy as of late, still fighting the doldrums over this latest move. 

Even without the use of a lamp, she found the bedroom’s dingy wallpaper hideous. It reminded Tori of Old Lady McClain, whose own bedraggled house towered over the one Tori and her mother had only recently abandoned. She ran a hand over the yellowed print. Strawberries. Who puts strawberried wallpaper in a bedroom?

Old Lady McClain. That’s who.

The neighborhood kids were convinced she was a witch. Though Tori had never seen evidence to the contrary, her mother assured her that Hortense McClain was merely an elderly woman who preferred the company of cats.  And there were a lot of cats.

Yes, this wallpaper screamed of Old Lady McClain, and now Tori was stuck with it.

Snippet Sunday – September 22, 2013

Continuing with the first chapter of Once Upon Nowhere, Tori confronts one of her biggest fears — a lightning storm — and allows her mind to wander. Her mother has reassured her that this time they’ve found the place where they will be able to settle down. So why would she rather be anywhere but here? 

When their station wagon had turned onto a rutted road leading up to a dilapidated farmhouse, Tori knew in her heart it would never be the case. And no amount of coaxing, then or now, would convince her it was all for the best.

She buried her face in a pillow, pulled the covers over her head and squeezed her eyes shut. But her attempts to block out the night’s symphony were futile. She bolted straight up at the next deafening crack.

As Tori fretted the edge of a blanket, the beats between lightning and thunder decreased. It was close. The pounding of her heart melded into the steady sweep of rain on their farmstead.

A nearby strike lit the night sky for one brief second. Shadows scuttled to the forgotten corners of her room, which remained much the same as when she had crossed its threshold three months earlier.

Snippet Sunday – 15 September, 2013

This is the beginning of my YA novel, Once Upon Nowhere, in which Tori’s life becomes even more complicated when her mother’s secretive past lands on their doorstop. Tori must battle the Master, the Witch, and the Finder of Lost Things, a humble thief with too much heart for his own good, in order to save her mother. And she just might find herself in the process.

Chapter One – Bump in the Night

Like most twelve-year-olds, Tori Lawson believed herself too old for lullabies and fairy tales, though, at that very moment, she thought of little else. The storm raged outside her window and pelted against the wood. She lost count the number of times thunderous claps had sent her scurrying across the hall to her mother’s room, only to linger at the door. Each time, a foreboding had washed over her, and she lumbered back to bed. There would be no comfort for her tonight, no matter how beautiful the melody.

The decaying farmhouse spluttered and groaned, as far away from slumber as Tori herself. Perhaps it, too, lamented a loss — one equal to her own — and cried out for solace. Tori had none to give.

“We’re going to love it here, sweetheart,” her mother had said. “Mark my words.” She had flashed that plastic smile, the one held in reserve for when she was about to throw her daughter’s life into turmoil . . .