Showing posts with label Young Adult Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Young Adult Fiction. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Reading and Writing
I have been reading a lot and only writing a little lately. This is the time of year I write the most. I will be posting some chapters soon.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Back to work
Well it’s a new year and I am back to work. It was great to have 2 weeks to sleep-in, nearly overdose on food and football and just to relax. One of the few real perks of being a public school teacher. Next year will be my 40th in front of the class, wow. With a New Year comes New Year’s resolutions—mine, to write more. I have a tendency to get in and out of the writing groove and looks like right now, I am in. My YA modern western mystery is once again moving along. I am hoping for 40 to 50 thousand words and am closing in on 30 thousand right now and writing, at a pace of, nearly a thousand a day.
Just a little excerpt from the chapter I am presently working on. (First Draft)
Jimmy heard the shot, flattened out in the sand of the dry creek and tried to quickly scoot backwards down the washed out canyon. He had not made it the twenty feet to the bend in the old creek bed when a startling reality came to him, he had not heard a slug hit and there was only one shot, again. Were they trying to scare him off, again? Or had someone shot at something else, maybe not him at all. His mind started to clear as he rethought the last thirty or so seconds. He slowly crept back to the spot where he had watched for the past hour or more. What he saw was strange or as Robert would say, “there is some weird stuff going on—supernatural---wo-oow-wo?”
The older, stockier, of the two men he had been watching was hitching the pick-up to the back of his Suburban. In what seemed like only seconds he brushed his hands on the back of his blue jeans, lit a new cigar and appeared to be laughing out loud. He flipped his match stick into the canyon, climbed into the Suburban and headed down the trail, but this time north, not south.
Jimmy sat back down, to rest or maybe to think. Possibly he needed to do both.
Can not wait to see what happens next--I will have to keep on writing.
Just a little excerpt from the chapter I am presently working on. (First Draft)
Jimmy heard the shot, flattened out in the sand of the dry creek and tried to quickly scoot backwards down the washed out canyon. He had not made it the twenty feet to the bend in the old creek bed when a startling reality came to him, he had not heard a slug hit and there was only one shot, again. Were they trying to scare him off, again? Or had someone shot at something else, maybe not him at all. His mind started to clear as he rethought the last thirty or so seconds. He slowly crept back to the spot where he had watched for the past hour or more. What he saw was strange or as Robert would say, “there is some weird stuff going on—supernatural---wo-oow-wo?”
The older, stockier, of the two men he had been watching was hitching the pick-up to the back of his Suburban. In what seemed like only seconds he brushed his hands on the back of his blue jeans, lit a new cigar and appeared to be laughing out loud. He flipped his match stick into the canyon, climbed into the Suburban and headed down the trail, but this time north, not south.
Jimmy sat back down, to rest or maybe to think. Possibly he needed to do both.
Can not wait to see what happens next--I will have to keep on writing.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Excerpt of YA Novel
WOW-Have I got a streak of lazy going on lately. With thanksgiving and my beloved Wyoming cowboys looking for a new football coach I have written very little, actually none, in the past week. I did spend some time ordering some Christmas presents on-line. Not really a big fan of huge black Friday crowds so I shopped from my easy chair.
I am back to working on my young adult, modern time, western. Thought I would post an excerpt so here goes—enjoy. But as the old cowboy saying goes, “I ain’t about to give any thing away, for free that is.”
From Chapter 2 of - Occurrence at Hell’s Half Acre Wyoming
Jimmy Bison-Man and Robert Lincoln sat shivering in the back of a small, crumbling cave tucked away on the west side of the canyons of Hell’s Half-Acre Wyoming. Shivering from the early morning summer cold, and what they didn’t want to admit, fear. Fear of what, of things they didn’t know? It wasn’t the cave the darkness the bats or the howling winds, nothing to do with their present living accommodations; it was about who they were and where they were going, these two big city Indian boys. Maybe, just maybe this cave, this canyon and their lives were supposed to be together, tied together by fate through their elders generations ago.
Silently they sat looked at each other across a very small nearly smokeless Sage wood fire. Both were thinking and probably thinking the same thing, “What are we doing here?” Each knew the answer, but were there really great treasures or anything else here, or was this just imagination, running wild, in the heads of two seventeen year olds? Silence padlocked them in the cave as they looked into the glowing fire, then at each other, and reluctantly out into the vast badlands of Hell’s Half Acre. And they listened, listened to the eerie sounds of the wind and it’s oowoo, oowoo howl as it turned and talked its way in, out and through the canyons, caverns, caves and spires of this Wyoming wasteland, all the time wishing they could magically vanish and reappear back home in Fairborn Indiana. But they were not home they were in Wyoming trying to find their past, follow their dreams and face the present.
I am back to working on my young adult, modern time, western. Thought I would post an excerpt so here goes—enjoy. But as the old cowboy saying goes, “I ain’t about to give any thing away, for free that is.”
From Chapter 2 of - Occurrence at Hell’s Half Acre Wyoming
Jimmy Bison-Man and Robert Lincoln sat shivering in the back of a small, crumbling cave tucked away on the west side of the canyons of Hell’s Half-Acre Wyoming. Shivering from the early morning summer cold, and what they didn’t want to admit, fear. Fear of what, of things they didn’t know? It wasn’t the cave the darkness the bats or the howling winds, nothing to do with their present living accommodations; it was about who they were and where they were going, these two big city Indian boys. Maybe, just maybe this cave, this canyon and their lives were supposed to be together, tied together by fate through their elders generations ago.
Silently they sat looked at each other across a very small nearly smokeless Sage wood fire. Both were thinking and probably thinking the same thing, “What are we doing here?” Each knew the answer, but were there really great treasures or anything else here, or was this just imagination, running wild, in the heads of two seventeen year olds? Silence padlocked them in the cave as they looked into the glowing fire, then at each other, and reluctantly out into the vast badlands of Hell’s Half Acre. And they listened, listened to the eerie sounds of the wind and it’s oowoo, oowoo howl as it turned and talked its way in, out and through the canyons, caverns, caves and spires of this Wyoming wasteland, all the time wishing they could magically vanish and reappear back home in Fairborn Indiana. But they were not home they were in Wyoming trying to find their past, follow their dreams and face the present.
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