Six Sentence Sunday 5/29/11

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone (Yanks and non-Yanks alike)! Shop 'til you drop, barbecue 'til you pop, and somewhere in there spare a thought for the fallen.

   Here's a little historical tidbit, for those who may not know: Memorial Day was first celebrated as "Decoration Day" on May 5, 1866 in Waterloo, N.Y, with the laying of flags and flowers on the graves of New York's Civil War dead.

   So...not to be too cheesy about it, I thought I'd give you six more sentences  from my Regency WIP, Lilacs at Dawn. 

  The hero, Marc Antony Warren, Viscount Webb, is a newly-returning combat veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He fought and was wounded on The Peninsula and suffers from "battle fatigue" or what was known as "soldier's heart" during the Civil War, "shell shock" after World War II, and what we today call PTSD. Whatever you wish to call it, Webb remains haunted by nightmares of combat and his fallen comrades in arms.

    So here are six more from Webb's homecoming:

Webb’s breath frosted the mist. He tasted the fog on his tongue, a cold, damp English welcome. Sharp pains in his leg had bedeviled him since Portsmouth. Nearly too weary now to retain his seat on the horse, he knew he’d overdone the riding. England, as usual, had overdone the weather.

With a practiced motion he flicked open a flask and tilted it to his mouth.

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FRIEND FRIDAY: JENNY SCHWARTZ

Hey, peeps.  Please welcome back to Friend Friday my guest blogger and fellow Carina Press writer, Jenny Schwartz, author of the thought-provoking, fantasy romance "Out of the Bottle" series,  Price of Freedom, Angel Thief, and Jenny's newest release, Three Wishes.

 I love her wit and her inspiring ideas! 
                                                        ***

Thanks, Taryn, for letting me visit again, especially since last time I couldn't stop talking about disasters. This time I've taken inspiration from Agatha Christie and will behave myself.


So how has the great Agatha inspired me? It's her Middle Eastern adventures. This is where she wrote “Murder on the Orient Express”.

                                                               The Hotel Baron by Mappo  via Wikimedia Commons

It seemed such an appropriate and romantic place to write that it started me thinking -- if I could write anywhere in the world, where would I choose?

I'd definitely want to spend some time note-taking in the British Museum's famous Reading Room.

                                                    British Museum Reading Room By Eneas via Wikimedia Commons

But for serious writing I'd love an undisturbed, solitary nook and I'm thinking ... houseboat. I've never actually tried writing on one, but a girl can dream!

If you could write anywhere in the world, where would you choose?

      

                                            

  Available from Carina Press

She is the Bringer of Death

Cali, a djinni, has sworn to twist the wishes of humans so they die by their own greed and evil. Her latest master is arms dealer David Saqr, a man Cali believes deserves the fate she has in store for him. But this time she finds herself up against Andrew, David's guardian angel.

He is a Protector of Life

Andrew believes David can yet find redemption. He fights Cali for the man's life, even as he tries to persuade her to give in to the sizzling attraction between them. He shows Cali another side of David, and invites her to trust again, to hope. But centuries of being enslaved have hardened Cali's heart--it's going to take all of Andrew's love to convince her to open it and let him in.

http://bit.ly/Wishes3

You can find Jenny at her website, http://www.authorjennyschwartz.com/

on Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/Jenny_Schwartz

Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/JennySchwartz.author

and indulging her love of pretty pictures on Tumblr, http://jennyschwartz.tumblr.com/

Six Sentence Sunday 5/22/11

           You've seen Webb get shot, and some of the wedding scene. Here are the first six from my Regency WIP, Lilacs at Dawn: 

           The dawn sky met the Thames, fragile April light and river the same ghostly gray as the mare emerging from the gloom. Needles of torment spiked through Webb’s right leg as he watched the mare approach.

         “Bloody hell.” He cursed the idiot who rode her and shifted his weight in the saddle. “Take heed, boy. Or you’ll have us both in the river.”

(Very unlikely that snippet will end up being the "meet" or the first six sentences, but it is what it is...for now.)

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Six Sentence Sunday 5/15/11

Back to Cole & Lara today:

           The five-word sentence might have been the longest conversation she’d had with the hunk behind the bar to date. So far he hadn’t said more to her than “Good choice, baby.”

           The notion that he might be unbending loosened Lara up faster than the tequila shot another bartender had poured before Sex-on-Legs started his shift. On the other hand . . . whoa.  Was the gorgeous blonde presence of Billie perched on the barstool beside her tonight responsible for Tall, Dark and Hot's sudden chattiness?
          Lara shook off the surge of ugly emotion and reminded herself that she and Hunkalicious had not exchanged more than ten words tops, that Billie was her best friend, and that jealousy’s green head should not be popping up like a demented whack-a-mole.

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Six Sentence Sunday 5/8/11

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

Couldn't recall any motherly sort of passages that didn't involve Epilogues and such, so instead, I offer you a toast.

More from my Regency WIP, Lilacs at Dawn.  Our story up to now: The night before his wedding, Viscount Webb is shot while on a mission on foreign soil and loses consciousness clutching his bride-to-be's garter. Somehow, he makes it back to England in time.  But his new bride, Sabrina, and his brother, Andrew, think he's drunk, rather than wounded, in shock and lightheaded from loss of blood.

At the reception, he offers his new bride a toast:

Webb rose, taking her hand.  All eyes turned toward them as he swayed on his feet, lifting his glass to her. 

"To my wife . . . the woman I would not die for."

An awkward silence greeted his words, followed by shocked gasps that made Sabrina's face flame.

"You mean 'would die for,' you ox," Andrew said.

"I know what I mean," Webb growled, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him, his hand tightening on hers so she could not turn away.  "I crawled back from hell to be here."

                                             

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Six Sentence Sunday 5/1/11

So...in honor of all things nuptial (just in case you have not had quite enough of weddings and British nobility)...here's another.

It's a continuation from my March 6 Six Sentence Sunday snippet from one of my gazillion WIPs, Lilacs of Dawn. 

You may remember (well, of course you don't, that's why I've handily provided the date!) very briefly meeting Marc Antony Warren, Viscount Webb (who has a great deal in common with Healing Heart's Adam, actually), who was on a secret mission in France the night before his wedding. As he's shot, he falls unconscious to the ground, clutching his bride-to-be's garter.

Some of you guessed he'd make it to the wedding the next morning. Some of you guessed right. More or less.

Sabrina's fingers bit into Chase's forearm, her legs turning to water as she gazed down the flower-strewn aisle and saw her tall, handsome, impossible bridegroom standing at the altar with his brother, magnificent in his wedding clothes.

Her foreboding returned full blast as she noted the odd pallor washing the color from Webb's grim face, his awkward, unnaturally stiff posture.

He does not want to be here.

"He loves you, Sabrina," Chase whispered, as if guessing her thoughts.

But Webb did not resemble a man in love or a bridegroom eager to be wed.

He looked. . . foxed!

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