I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...
I don’t always post excerpts from my manuscript, but I happened to come across this snippet from Lady Wynwood’s Spies 1: Archer, it made me laugh. I don’t really remember writing it, but now I’m glad I did. :)
Sep had made a living out of keeping his emotions from his face, but it was increasingly hard to do so as he and Calvin disembarked from the cart on the streets of Jem Town.
They first headed to where he knew Michael had last been, at Auntie Ann’s Bakery. But Calvin grew tense as they approached from down the street. “There are more people than normal hanging around. Something happened.”
They didn’t need to ask anyone—there were several groups of people huddled together and whispering, so Sep and Calvin sidled up to one of them. Calvin had a look of salacious interest on his young face, and a woman in a dirty mobcap immediately asked, “Did you hear what happened? Lotty was killed early this morning! Found lying against the wall of the bakery, her neck broke.” The woman shivered.
“Must be strong to break a woman’s neck,” the man next to her said in a low voice.
“Hush,” a second woman said. “We don’t talk about them.”
Sep was almost certain they were talking about Jack’s men, who were taking the Root.
“Why would they kill her?” a third woman asked in soft, wondering voice.
“It’s because of that no-good man of hers, that actor thinks he’s a writer. What was his name?”
“He went by some ridiculous name, something like Archipelago Constipation or something or other.”
Sep had to tighten every muscle in his face to keep from reacting to that.
“Didn’t you hear? He went mad only a few days ago. Busted up my cousin’s cabbage cart over in the Long Glades.”
“I hope they threw him in Newgate.”
“He never got there. Got trampled by a horse.”
“So now both Lotty and her man are dead?” The horrified question made everyone pause for a long moment at the unspoken implications of that fact.
Calvin took this moment to tug at Sep’s sleeve and lead him away, toward the entrance to the bakery. In a low voice, Calvin said, “Once they realized both Lotty and Mr. Constipation are dead, they wouldn’t talk anymore about who might have done it. It would be too dangerous.”
Comments