Tuesday, June 24, 2014

WIPpet Wednesday: "Not Ashamed"

Happy Wednesday! My wrists are on fire from some crazy JuNoWriMo sprints, so I'll keep this VERY brief.  Six sentences from page 25 of Draft1 (and today just HAPPENS to be 6/25 ... see what I did there?):

***

The agent pushed Mr. Tong’s head down and lowered him into the car. Mr. Tong did what he could to lift his chin high. He would not be ashamed. He would not show them fear. He had survived the past fifty-three years never knowing what happened to his wife. If he died tonight, Mr. Tong took comfort knowing he would either be reunited with his beloved, or he would at least be able to watch her from above.

***

Blog Love: Huge thanks to K L Schwengel for hosting the WIPpet Wednesday blog hop, where authors post snippets from the current Works In Progress.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

WIPpet Wednesday: "Such Idols"

Happy Wednesday, friends! I hope you are all enjoying yourselves this week. I'm continuing to work on my JuNoWriMo project, Draft1. My wrists aren't quite sure how they feel about this, but my muse (who happens to be extremely masculine - anybody else's??) is certainly thrilled to be drafting again. This week, I'm posting eleven sentences from Draft1 since it's the eleventh day of the month. If I was a hash-tag abuser, I might include something like #JustSayNoToComplicatedWIPpetMath, but I won't.

Happy WIPpeting!

***

He loved her. How easily he could admit it now to himself, when both their lives were forfeit. He loved her, and that’s why he couldn’t even lift his face to the ceiling of his meter-high cell. If he had been able to keep a tighter rein on his emotions, if he had followed through with his mission instead of charging after her like a gallant, errant fool, she would have never been caught. It was his fault that she was captured, his love for her that had put a dozen innocent contacts in danger. And yet, if he had to make those choices again, he would repeat the same offenses a hundred times over.

He loved her, and now that he acknowledged it in the darkness of his cell, he knew he would never find a way to stop loving her. It was just as well she was gone. Such idols need to be exorcised entirely, plucked like weeds before they have a chance to grow and choke out all surrounding life. A love like that could never be expressed. A love like that could only end in tragedy.

***


Blog Love: Huge thanks to K L Schwengel for hosting the WIPpet Wednesday blog hop, where authors post snippets from the current Works In Progress.

Random Fact: My boys are on the couch now watching "Lady and the Tramp" with a very dazed puppy who just got back from a little trip to the vet with one less organ than she woke up with this morning.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

WIPpet Wednesday: "The Hammock"

So, I'm officially JuNoWriMo-ing this month, although I'm not gonna be a WriMo poster-child. I hope to have the first draft completed by the end of July, and I'll be editing a little as I go so it's not quite so overwhelming to do it all at once. (Shhh ... don't tell anyone!)

This WIP, currently dubbed Draft1, is a companion novel to Slave Again. It happens during the same time frame and involves two characters, Hannah and Simon, who were briefly introduced in Slave Again. They are two North Koreans who found refuge in China and eventually returned to their homeland. Things didn't necessarily turn out as they hoped.

***

With the chickens clucking out back and sunlight streaming in through the small window, Hannah slept. She dreamed of swinging in Mrs. Stern’s garden hammock, the sun warming her all the way to the center of her being. Enveloped by its rays, she didn’t need any blankets. The heat itself wrapped around her like a protective quilt. The pain in her leg was gone, her stomach was full.* Inside, she heard the murmured prayers of the Secret Seminary students.

A finger stroked her cheek, and a sudden, delightful chill pricked at her neck like a light breeze. She reached up and touched his hand, closed her eyes, and breathed in his familiar masculine scent intermingled with the garden perfumes. “Shouldn’t you be in there with the rest of them?” he asked. His voice was distant, muffled somehow. She couldn’t tell if his tone was accusatory or not.

She strained her ears. Inside the house, her comrades interceded with fervor for the people of North Korea, for those trying to escape, for those in prison camps. “We should go inside,” she whispered. She made a move to get up, but her body was too heavy, the heat itself weighing her down. “I can’t,” she admitted.

“I know.” She heard the smile in his voice as he lay down beside her. Waves of heat danced up her back as he pressed up against her, curled up into her, wrapped his arms around her. The hammock swayed, but there was plenty of room for them to share. She had never been so close to him before, but it was familiar, like a cup of Mrs. Stern’s sweetened tea, just the right temperature, perfectly flavored, the familiar smell instantly calming her center. His fingers stroked through her hair. Her head rested on the soft spot between his shoulder and bicep. “I want to stay here,” she whispered. “I don’t want to go anywhere."

“Me, either.” His lips brushed against her ear, the sensation of that first kiss shooting tendrils of heat and comfort that eventually settled deep in her belly.

When Hannah woke up, her pillow was soaked in tears, and she shivered from the cold.
 
***

These six paragraphs (for the sixth month) sum up basically the themes of Draft1 [working title].

Blog Love: Huge thanks to K L Schwengel for hosting the WIPpet Wednesday blog hop, where authors post snippets from the current Works In Progress.

*Calling All Green Thumbs: *I wanted to put something about what kind of flowers were in the garden and what they smelled like. This is east China in the late fall. The garden is tended by an American. Any ideas? I'm more of a veggie gardener myself and probably couldn't identify more than a dozen flowers by name.

Random Fact: On Thursday, my husband and I are celebrating our ten-year anniversary!