Saturday, January 28, 2012

Sweet Saturday Sample: Thumps and Losers

Welcome back to Sweet Saturday Samples! Because I have made a reputation as a writer of Western tales, folks might think I never have written anything in any other form or genre. On the contrary, I can write short works in other time periods. This week I'm giving two samples, one from each of the two short stories in my ebook, Thumps and Losers.


Thumps in the Night

Two thumps awakened Muriel Harris in the night. She clutched the covers to her chin, wishing Mel hadn’t had to leave on a business trip the day after they’d moved to the country.

The thump came again, louder this time, followed by a screech of metal against metal. Muriel reached for the flashlight she’d put on the bedside table because the worker from the rural electric company hadn’t made it out to their place to turn on the electricity yet. She cursed her carelessness in leaving her cell phone on the patio.

The smooth metal flashlight felt cool in her hand as she got out of bed, but before she could switch on the beam, the flashlight slipped out of her shaking fingers and crashed to the floor. Muriel went to her knees in the dark, feeling around for the flashlight, but it was not to be found.

A clatter of metal came from the kitchen, and Muriel jumped to her feet. What was out there?

Losers Weepers

“Mom,” cried ten-year-old Bobby Brown as he rushed in the door from school. “Guess what I found on the street! It’s a wallet, Mom, and there’s a lot of money in it.”

Thelma Brown put down the iron and brushed back the hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked on as Bobby opened the wallet and spread out the cash on the worn kitchen table. “Money, huh? Where’d you find all this money?”
~~

On UK Kindle Store

Thanks for visiting. Your comments are welcome. Then I invite you to go read other writers' samples.

Friday, January 27, 2012

41 Words

Yesterday I was able to tinker with a scene and write 41 words. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the word count at that time. Probably because I don't have a proper place for writing it down. I used to, then the year changed, and the darling little writer's calender I was using is no longer available. I must find something else, really soon! I have the beginnings of a new scene written in a notebook, which I didn't have time to locate and grab the other day as I left the house.

And how is YOUR New Year coming along?

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Sweet Saturday Sample: War Party

Welcome to Sweet Saturday Samples. Here's just a mouthful of my short story based on a real event, War Party:




War Party

Black smoke drew Rolla's eye, smoke where there should not be smoke. Then he heard the noise: high, piercing yips, and a woman's scream, and the flat report of gunshots.
A sand hill girdled with stunted mesquite trees blocked his view of the home place. The boy tongued the grass stem from his teeth as the dun-colored pack horse swung its head, nostrils wide, and the rope between the boy and horse tightened. Water in the barrels sloshed and splashed over the rims. Rolla smelled dank wetness as it cut through the dust on the sides of the casks.
He heard Pa's angry voice, and more shots, and the eternal yips, chilling his spine. Rolla started to run, pulling the dun behind, but the horse resisted, so he tied a fumbled knot around a mesquite branch. Then he scrambled and panted his way up the slope.
Rolla reached the top and flopped belly-down behind a tangle-branched creosote bush. He broke a stem so he could see through the shrub, and a tarry odor filled his lungs. Now he saw the source of the smoke. On the right, the dugout roof and door were ablaze, and to the left, hay stacks burned next to the corrals. The boy tried to count the dashing, milling figures with long black hair tied down by rolled bandanas, but because of the dust and smoke, he lost the total.
~~~

Thanks for visiting! Now go check out other writers' samples.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Interview and Prizes

Not here on my blog. The Interview is of me, though, and it's on the Mormon Mommy Writers Blog. Nikki Wilson asked me for the Interview to go along with a fabulous offering from American Night Writers Association (ANWA), and a couple of my ebooks that I'm giving away, to celebrate the third anniversary of the MMW blog. I got that gig because I am the founder of ANWA, and she wanted to know all about the origins and growth of the organization.


Coming soon: I'll have a couple of book reviews in the next few months, as well as Sweet Saturday Samples each weekend, so come back often. Thank you!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Sweet Saturday Sample: Excerpt from Cottonwood Cowboys

I can't believe how fast the first two weeks of January have flown by! And that I completely forgot to post my Sweet Saturday Sample after I signed up to participate. I'm very sorry. Here is an excerpt from my short story, Cottonwood Cowboys, available as a ebook at all Kindle stores, or at Smashwords.com in many ebook formats.
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Cottonwood Cowboys

The week ran along fine until Thursday night.

Then the big cottonwood came crashing down on the corral.

It about ruined my weekend.

I guess I didn’t mind so much that I was stuck on the two-man saw with Curly, but Saturday afternoon working toward evening was a poor time to pull tree clearing duty, especially this Saturday, with the dance all laid out at the school house, and a new schoolmarm to gaze at.

I reckon it wasn’t Curly’s fault; there wasn’t a finer hand than Curly, except maybe for me, on the whole Four Rivers, Arizona, spread. It was just that I was itching to get to that dance, having caught a beforehand sign of that schoolmarm when last I was in town.

The trouble was, Curly was just as anxious to get duded up and out to the school house as I was, and I didn’t want him to get an edge on me.

I guess it weren’t Amos Ramsey’s fault neither. But I sure cussed him some under my breath while I worked that saw back and forth as fast as I could stand. Old Amos owned the Four Rivers Ranch, and I thought sure he was going to leave that old, rotten tree for another day or two, seeing as how it had been laying there since the storm brought it down on Thursday night, and he hadn’t seen fit to give orders to clear it away.

Old Amos changed his mind along about Saturday noon, and decided he surely could use some firewood from that stringy tree, and while Curly and me were at it, we might as well clear the whole mess from the corral. And after that, if we didn’t mind, we could fix the section of fence that got mashed with the tree atop it.

“Tarnation,” I said, along with a few other little things, once Old Amos was safely out of earshot. “I reckon I hired on to do just about anything, as long as it could be done from the back of a horse.”

Curly growled something in reply, and yanked on the handle of the saw.

“Well, I allow as how I hate to dig postholes about as bad as anything,” I came back.

Curly wasn’t thrilled, neither.
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