Excerpt #4 from Summer Magic

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 / Marcia Meara / Leave a comment

One more short one before heading to bed, perchance to READ! Summer Magic is divided into two parts. The first part is called “Mac At Ten,” and the poems involve MacKenzie Cole from Wake-Robin Ridge, when he was a boy of ten, and spent his summers camping on the Ridge, with his dad. This is the poem that gives the collection its name, and is the very essence of the little boy Mac was at that point in his life. Enjoy!

***

Summer Magic

Crawling quietly from his tent,
His dad still lost in slumber within,
He sits down alone on the granite slab,
Coltish legs drawn up to his chin,
And arms wrapped around skinny knees.
He gazes toward the pale horizon,
Watching the sleeping valley below.
With breath held in anticipation,
He waits for the magic
He knows will come.

There! A thin curve of molten red!
A far away sliver of fiery light
Breaks the horizon.
Rising slowly,
It bathes the tops of the rolling hills
In a brilliant spill of gold.
Mother-of-pearl dawn
Gives way to butter yellow
Morning light.

In front of his wide, blue eyes,
The world awakens.
Magic arrives and
Day is born,
Again.
He smiles to himself and wraps
His arms more tightly
Around his knees,
Shivering in private delight, and
Holding the beauty
Close within,
Having already learned
Some magic is
Secret.

Summer Magic: Poems of Life & Love

Excerpt: Prologue from A Boy Named Rabbit

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 2 Comments

I love all the characters I write about, even the bad ones, in a perverse sort of way, but I love Rabbit most of all. This plucky little boy was so much fun to bring to life, and his journey out of the wilderness and into Sarah and Mac’s cozy life spoke to my heart every step of the way. Rabbit looks at life with a unique perspective, and I hope readers will find him as adorable, clever, and completely compelling as I did. He has a lot to share with all of us, including the most important lesson of all: giving and receiving profound love is always, always worth the risk. Here’s the prologue to Book 2 of my Wake-Robin Ridge series, A Boy Named Rabbit.

***

TUESDAY
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
DEEP IN THE NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAINS

“Gran? Gran, wake up. Wake up, please?”

The little boy reached out a timid hand and shook the bony arm of the woman on the cot. “Please, Gran? I got tea here. I made it the way you like, an’ all. With honey.”

“I’m awake, Boy. Stop shakin’ me, now. Help me up.”

He set the tea on the apple crate, and pulled his grandmother into a sitting position. She was growing more and more frail every day, weighing hardly more than he did. That wasn’t a good thing. She was a grown up. Grown up women should be much bigger than he was.

Propping her up on the cot, he wrapped a worn army blanket around her narrow shoulders, as the wracking coughs started again. This was the longest spell yet, and when she choked to a stop, the sound of her wheezing scared him.

“I wish Grampa was back.” He handed her the mug of hot tea, being careful not to spill it .

“Wishin’ won’t make it so. You know that.”

“But we need him. He’s bringin’ some of that stuff what makes you feel better.”

“He’ll be here directly, don’t fret, Boy. I’ll be okay ‘til then, good Lord willin’.”

She took a sip of tea. “Perfect. You done good.”

The boy’s straight, black brows lifted, and some of the fear left his enormous, dark blue eyes. “You need to get better, Gran. Grampa says we gotta move camp, ‘fore the weather gets any colder.”

“He’s right. Mild winter, so far, but worse is on the way. We done fished this little stream ‘bout out, anyway. Maybe time to head back to the caves.” Continue reading →

Heartbreaking, but…

March 12, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 6 Comments

…I would be remiss if I didn’t make note of the fact that the world has lost a bright and shining star. Author Sir Terry Pratchett has passed on, and the world is the sadder for it. I wish I had discovered him years earlier, but his books made an enormous impact on my life in recent years. The Wee, Free Men and I will drink a toast in his honor tonight, and maybe even carry off a sheep or two. We will never forget him, and long may the great turtle swim on, carrying DiscWorld far and wide, forever.

And the Answer IS…Until Sunday Night!

March 12, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 4 Comments

The question, naturally, is “How long does Excerpt Week last?” Of course, if you’ve been paying close attention here…you HAVE been, haven’t you?…you are probably already aware that I encourage folks to leave excerpts of their work any time they wish. So if you miss the “Official” deadline for Excerpt Week, you can still post one. Pretty much whenever. But we are building momentum here, and posting by Sunday night might bring you more sharing results. So…you’ve still got three days to take care of that, plus the rest of today, of course. Get posting, folks!

Excerpt: Pack Princess by Aimee Easterling

March 12, 2015March 12, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 1 Comment

I am posting on behalf of Aimee Easterling who is under the weather, currently. This is from Chapter 1 of her latest novel, Pack Princess, Book 2 in her Wolf Rampant werewolf series. Enjoy!

***

…When I set off for my afternoon run, the whole forest smelled like my mate. Pine needles and leaf mold and that tinge of something extra that said “powerful male werewolf .” Which is why I was smiling in a tongue-lolling canine fashion… right up until the moment when a huge wolf came barreling out from behind a bush and sent me spinning head over heels to land with a thud against the trunk of a tulip poplar.

Werewolves are pretty rough-and-ready, so it wasn’t the crack on my skull that had me shaking my head in a daze as I scrambled back to my feet. Nope, it was just plain surprise. From the moment when I’d first stepped into my father’s metaphorical shoes, I expected to have to face down power-hungry uncles and cousins in order to maintain my place as alpha of our current pack. But as days stretched into months without a challenge in sight, I’d slowly relaxed my guard. As a result , I now realized that it had been weeks since I’d bothered to peer at the inner wolf of each shifter around me, attempting to seek out insurrections before they had time to spark into flame. And I certainly wasn’t expecting to be attacked here, deep in the heart of pack territory , where there were unlikely to be werewolves from other clans trying to slip past our defenses. So what the heck was going on?

Even as these bewildered thoughts tumbled through my mind, I was spinning on my heel, ruff raised to make me appear larger as I curled my upper lip back into a lupine snarl. But then I paused, even more confused, as I recognized my father’s grizzled muzzle.

Chief Wilder had been the bane of my existence growing up, and he was also the primary reason I’d fled Haven in the first place to eke out a lonely existence in the human world. Yet, since then, my father had manipulated me back into our shared pack, and he’d recently seemed quite willing to let his sole surviving daughter take over leadership of clan Wilder . So what was with this out-of-the-blue attack? Could Crazy Wilder’s nickname have become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps my father wasn’t simply stuck in wolf form. Maybe now, he was truly cracked.

Pack Princess

Excerpt #3 from Summer Magic: Poems of Life & Love

March 11, 2015March 13, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 6 Comments

It’s fun to have a chance to share a bit of poetry on here. I’ve always loved it, but in today’s world, far too few take the time to enjoy the sound of words, and the shape of a poem, which to me is an integral part of what it says. Even though I’m not great at it, I enjoy writing poetry far too much to ever quit. The last one I shared was about love and hope. This one is about betrayal and loss.

The Last Rose

Late July, and
The day drowses,
Air heavy and still.
Bees moving slowly from
Flower to flower,
In a dance weighed down by heat.
Sleepy hours spent dreaming, longing
For other places, other chances.
Anything better
Than one more day
Spent under this weight,
With movements made slow,
Like easy prey.

He walked out of the dust
And into the garden,
The answer to a prayer.
Wickedly handsome, he came to her with
A smile full of promises she chose to believe.
Take me away, she begged.
Yes, he whispered, of course.
Whatever you want, my beautiful girl.
He gave her dreams of cool, green hills
And kisses that tasted of summer peaches.
Sweet lies on a sweeter tongue,
Promises whispered with hot breath,
Against already burning skin,
And everywhere, the smell of roses
Thick on the summer air.

But winter came,
Bringing brittle wind
Seeping under the sill,
As cold as hungry lies
Told when the sun was warm.
Her heart is a frozen stone
In the center of her breast,
The chance of rescue,
Gone. Forgotten.
A faded rose in a dry vase
Drops one last petal to the floor,
As gray as her life
In this barren room.
Empty promises fled
With the summer sun,
And left nothing behind
But dead dreams and dying hope,
Gasping and huddled
Against the bitter
Cold.

Excerpt from Hunter, Riverbend Book 2

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015 / Marcia Meara / Leave a comment

Those of you who have read Swamp Ghosts and keep asking when Hunter is coming out will be glad to know it’s still on schedule for a late summer, early fall publication date. And just as a special treat for ya, I’m sharing the Prologue here today. This is a Work In Progress, so it will no doubt be tightened and polished a good bit in editing, but here’s the rough draft. Enjoy!

***

Dawn, March 20, 2014
~~~

EVERYTHING WAS PAIN. Everything he felt, everything he remembered. Pain, and pain, and pain. His dreams were filled with sounds of agony, screams ricocheting through his head. And blood. Rivers of blood, forming scarlet, coppery-scented puddles that spread across the darkness.

He woke up on his knees, vomiting into the grass. Afterward, he crawled back up onto the park bench, mouth sour, and head throbbing. Shivering, he tried to push the dreams away, but they weren’t ready to let him go.

Something bad, that was the problem. He had done something bad. Worse than bad. Something unthinkable. He understood that his crime was the root of all his dreams, and if only he could remember, he’d know what he needed to do next. But when he tried to get it straight in his head, the screams would start again, followed by that God-awful, unrelenting pain.

As the day dawned around him, he huddled bent over on the bench, the smell of cheap whiskey on his breath, and sledgehammers pounding inside his skull. He scrubbed at his eyes, as though that would wipe away the images of all that blood, and make the last echoes of those agonized screams disappear. His only clear thought was how to make it all end. Something—someone—needed to die. Fight fire with fire, blood with blood, pain with pain. Oh, yes. That was the answer.

Shuffling to his unsteady feet, he walked through the morning mist. He had no idea what state he was in, let alone the name of this little town, but he heard the unmistakable whoosh of cars speeding down a highway. In five minutes, he stood by the edge of the southbound lane, holding out his thumb. Instinct told him the direction to travel, and desperation kept him upright, as he waited for the ride that would take him where he needed to go. His plan was simple. If death would bring an end to this pain, then someone was going to die.

Show, Don’t Tell, on Twitter

March 11, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 4 Comments

A wonderful post to help you get the most out of your Tweets. CLICK-throughs, rather than just Retweets, mean more opportunities for sales. I’ve already been doing some of this, but I’m definitely going to switch over a ton of my scheduled tweets to this method. Give it a look!

Nicholas C. Rossis

From blackberryczech.cz

I have often mentioned the “show, don’t tell” rule in my blog. MMJaye, a regular around here and a great supporter of Indies in her own blog, kindly wrote this guest post for me, tackling the rule from a novel perspective: how to use it when tweeting. Enjoy her excellent post, which, I admit, was an eye-opener for me.

“Show not Tell” on Twitter: a guide to “clickable” tweets

The “show don’t tell” rule has been drummed into every writer’s head. Traditional publishers and editors swear by it. Some Indie authors are less than enthusiastic about it, but, no matter how much you use or respect the rule, you have to admit that it does invest your writing with one major attribute: it becomes evocative.

What surprises me, however, is the fact that although writers accept that “show don’t tell” leads to evocative writing and…

View original post 1,228 more words

A Note on Excerpt Week

March 11, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 3 Comments

Hi, Folks!

I’m having a good time with Excerpt Week, though I wish more of you were playing. Come on, don’t be shy! We want to read…and SHARE…what you’ve written. A couple of points I need to make though:

1. If you area not a regular contributor to The Write Stuff, you can still share an excerpt from your books. Please email me at mmeara@cfl.rr.com and I’ll tell you how. It will work much better than trying to share in the comments section. I promise to post for you, or to tell you how to become a contributor so you can do it yourself.

2. I reserve the right (I’ve always wanted to say that) to insert the “Continue Reading” break into the middle of longer posts, though I probably won’t do it until the front page of the blog starts to fill up. This is just so that other posts don’t get lost. You won’t lose your readers, as they can click to see the rest of your excerpt or post. When it’s a slow day, this isn’t an issue, but as more posts come in, it helps keep things visible.

3. As you read and enjoy these exerpts, please, please remember to SHARE with all your friends. Reblog, post on Facebook, Tweet them out, email links to friends you think would be especially interested…whatever you want. But the main reason this blog exists is for writers to help writers, and that includes sharing far and wide to put writers in front of potential readers. We’ll all do the same for you, when you post.

And that’s it. Enjoy all the goodies our group has to offer! We are a widely diverse and interesting bunch, here. And take advantage of this chance to share your own work, whether published yet, or not. Let’s get your name out there!

As you were, people!

Excerpt from Dead Girl in a Charleston Marsh

March 11, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 2 Comments

Author Eldon Brown shared a table with me at the St. Cloud Author Symposium a few weeks ago, and would like to share an excerpt from his mystery, Dead Girl in a Charleston Marsh. Here you go, Eldon. Enjoy, folks!

…The marsh often yielded small treasures which lodged among the tall cattails. Ben spotted something gray and large, ebbing at the edge of the marsh. Might be a dead gator he thought. He approached with caution, realizing that the creature might not be dead. He picked up his newly found paddle to use against the animal; just in case. He hoped it was dead, as he could sell fresh gator, for a dollar a pound, to a local butcher. Simpson reduced speed and carefully approached the floating mass but it was not a gator. Just some old clothes, he surmised. Sadly, he put his paddle down. Someone just too lazy to phone Salvation Army. He prodded the wet mound with his long handled net. The mass moved slightly, bobbing in the Mercury’s prop wash. It turned just enough that a bloated face suddenly appeared and then, freed from the cattails, it rolled over and began a lonesome voyage down river. Simpson fought the nausea that almost overcame him. His heart raced and he began to shiver. He was cold, yet he perspired. He knew that no life remained in the body which now floated away. The swollen face was gray and bits of skin were torn away where the crabs had been feasting.

Dead Girl in a Charleston Marsh is available on Amazon in both print & Kindle formats.