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 →

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.

Edgelanders Excerpt

March 11, 2015 / Jenny / 2 Comments

Excerpt week is such a great idea! Thank you, Marcia, for nudging me out of my winter cave to join in the fun.

Here’s a snippet from the first book in my Serpent of Time series, Edgelanders, classified within the high fantasy/romance category.

“What are you?” he whispered.

“Looks like a dead girl to me.” Rue’s shadow blocked the light of the moons, fell over the girl and darkened the bright perfection of her face.

“No.” He shook his head, a sweaty wisp of black hair falling into his face. “Not dead.” He’d almost said not a girl, but how could he possibly know that for sure? She smelled human, but there was something else in her blood, something familiar, something savage that whispered words to his soul he couldn’t understand.

Why couldn’t Rue smell it? She was a master huntress, could track a rabbit to its warren from five miles away, but she seemed completely unaffected by the power he could feel in that girl. Rue had known others like that girl, before he was even born. Surely the familiarity of her scent was not lost on his sister’s keen senses.

“Well, she will be soon enough. I can smell death on her. Leave her,” she said. “We need to secure the perimeter. Drive whoever owns that pack of hounds you just tore apart from our lands before they come looking for their dead girl and lay her murder on our doorstep. The last thing we need right now is an inquiry.”

“I won’t leave her here to die,” he refused.

And that was exactly what would happen to her if they just walked away. That beautiful little flower would breathe her last and her pale face would haunt his every moment until the day he died. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to take her home.

“I… I just can’t.”

His hand fell away from her cheek and he tucked it gently behind her neck before sliding it further in to lift her upper body from the mud. He shoved his other arm beneath the backs of her thighs and then heaved her weight against his chest as he rose.

“I’m taking her to Rhiorna. She can heal her.”

“Are you stupid? Wait, don’t answer that,” Rue smirked down at him. “Leave her, Finn. You know the laws. She is an outsider. She has no place here, and if she dies on our land, that is her own fault. Besides, what is that old witch going to do? Nothing. She hasn’t done anything useful since…” Her words faded into the low whisper of the wind, but Finn didn’t wait for her to finish.

“I don’t care about the laws!” he roared. “I’m not leaving her to die.”

“Finn, I can’t let you take her. I’m sorry.”

“I’d like to see you try to stop me.” Shifting her weight against his chest, she felt light as a feather in his arms; her body nestled perfectly against his as if she’d been made to fit in his arms, made to be carried that way by him and only him.

“Finn…”

He was already walking, northwest toward Drekne. He’d gone several paces before his sister’s frantic footsteps quickly fell in behind him. Rue may have been his elder, but she was half his size, and when her hand came down on his shoulder to try and spin him around, he jerked it off and rounded to face her with fire in his eyes.

“Don’t, Rue. Don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”

“What? You’re going to challenge me over some… some stranger? Some half-dead girl? I can’t let you take her into the village. It is forbidden. The council…”

“Damn the council.”

“Damn the council? Damn the council?” She brought her hand down again, gently this time, silent pleading in her bright silver eyes as she tried to sympathize with his plight. “I know you like to rile them up, to get under their skin and show them you’re not a pup to be pushed around anymore, but this… Finn, this is madness. They will put you in silver chains and drag you into exile. Not even Viln will be able to save you this time.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?” she shrieked. “How can you not care? About your own brother, about me? There will be consequences for this.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” No one would understand; they never did.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t understand. This girl, who is she to you? No one, Finn. A human, a stranger.”

“She’s not human,” he muttered, but Rue hadn’t heard him.

“I will not let you throw away your life here with the pack for some stranger.”

“You can’t stop me,” he shrugged her hand away again. “I’d advise you not to try.”

Edgelanders is available digitally on Amazon: Amazon, Amazon Australia, Amazon UK, Amazon Brazil, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon India, Amazon Italy, Amazon Spain, Amazon Japan, Amazon Mexico. Members of the Kindle Unlimited program can borrow this book and the sequel, Sorrow’s Peak from the Lending Library with their membership.

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.

Excerpt from Swamp Ghosts

March 10, 2015March 11, 2015 / Marcia Meara / Leave a comment

You guys have been warned. If nobody else is posting excerpts (and maybe even if they ARE), I’ll fill in the blanks for the whole week. I’ve got 3 novels and a book of poetry out, plus a new work in progress. I have LOTS I can share. Creepy stuff, like this prologue, romantic scenes, funny scenes, scenes from the 60’s, scenes with no redeeming social value at all…you get the picture. And without further ado, here…in its entirety, because there’s really no good place to break this one…is the prologue from Swamp Ghosts. When someone else posts today, I’ll split it to take up less room. For now, it’s all right here on the main page. 😀 Enjoy! Shiver, if you like. It’s encouraged. (And you have my permission to buy the book to see what else happens. 😀 Link is at the bottom.)

…

THE CAR BUMPED and rocked as he drove down the rutted dirt road, steering by a wash of silver light from the gibbous moon. Only a few more nights until it was completely full, making the road nearly as bright as it would be by day, but there was still enough light tonight to see that the way ahead was clear—except for the tall grasses and weeds, indicating no one had driven the road in a long time. That was all the visibility he needed. Not much chance of meeting anyone along such a remote stretch of river, anyway, especially since the state had bought this entire tract of land a few years ago, and chained off all the roads, posting No Access signs everywhere. Still, he wasn’t going to tempt fate by turning on his headlights. Not with what he was carrying in the back on this summer night.

Should be nearing the old canoe launch any time now. Continue reading →

You Guys Better Get Busy…

March 9, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 6 Comments

…or you’re gonna be reading a LOT of excerpts from ME this week! 😯 Here’s a short one from my book Summer Magic. It’s the final poem in the book, wherein I get the last laugh over all the naysayers I’ve known through the years. Some of you might recognize this scenario.

Attitude Really IS Everything

No!
Yes.
You can’t!
I can.
Why?
Why not?
It’s all wrong!
It’s all right.
You shouldn’t!
I should.
You won’t!
I will.
It could be bad!
It could be good.
It’s too late!
There’s time.
You’re too old!
I’m still here.
You did it!
I did.