Updates
Hope everyone is having a wonderfully sweaty, heat-stroke-inducing summer like we are here in the heart of Texas! Seriously, think we should move to the mountains somewhere cool. Then, of course, you get to deal with the other side of the heat index, but right now snow sure sounds wonderful.
As for writerly updates, I’ve worked a bit here and there on Tamn, Heaven’s Edge #3, & on Scarred Beauty of course, but real life took the front seat this last week. I don’t mind the break once in a while, though the crawl of months fills my mind more often than not. And I have to remind myself it will get done, one day and word count at a time.
Return to Silver Hollow
Today I wanted to share something from my little pet side-project. I usually have one while working on my main book and a novella. Never have been able to write just one manuscript at a time. Know that may sound a bit mad, and I’m not exactly sure how I keep it straight either. I just know it works best. And, by the title above you may have already guessed this has to do with Silver Hollow.
I’ve wanted to re-write the first book several times, started to a couple of times, in fact. After all my writing has changed and grown and there’s some kind of ugly compulsion I know artists have, where you look at a finished piece and always see room for improvement. Since Silver Hollow was my first novel, I see plenty of it.
However, instead of a third rewrite, I want to continue the story, instead. We’re in the beginning phases as far as story outline, etc, but I have written a few new scenes. The following flashback gives a glimpse into Amie’s past, before she was stabbed in a back alley and brought back to life again. Stay tuned for further sneak peaks and happy reading!
It was raining. Everyone was wearing black and it was raining and it looked like a funeral scene from every movie ever. The rain was what drove Amie to put on a yellow dress instead of the black one she had found in Mother’s closet. The color clashed with her pale skin, black hair and bold eyes but no one would dare point out a fashion misstep to her today. Not to mention she didn’t feel very yellow today, but it was—had been—her mother’s favorite color.
The rain made Amie shiver involuntarily and she gripped the familiar hands holding hers on either side in order to root her feet to the ground. The twins wore dresses of green and purple, their favorite colors it so happened. Not only were they the best friends she had ever, would ever have, but they were kick ace enough to help her make a statement.
The minister was from the church Amie’s mother liked them to visit. She was from the Smoky Mountains and bred to be a good Christian woman. From her Amie learned the basics, how not to swear while swearing and southern manners. Father was from some nowhereville town in northern England and never spoke of God, or his beliefs for that matter. His lessons had been of a different color. Was it wrong of her to feel relief, knowing they were over, that she could join the real world and go to college with normal teenagers?
Amie wondered what he would have thought of this funeral. She wondered for the umpteenth time why she was so horrible to her parents the night a car accident smeared them on the interstate. She wondered why she had insisted on going to the movies with the twins instead of attending the uptown party with her parents. At the time it seemed like such a big deal. She was graduated and biding her time till college in the fall. Despite Father’s emphasis on networking and making adult connections, Amie knew it would have just been another in a string of boring big-wig parties.
“Drustan and Melody Wentworth were loving parents to their daughter, Jessamiene…” the minister droned on. Amie cringed at her full name. The twins squeezed her hands in unison. They often did that, the creepy twin-thing, even though they were fraternal and looked nothing alike.
Amie decided to put aside her guilt. She wouldn’t cry in front of these people. These people didn’t know her because she was home-schooled and only kind as her parents raised her to be. Beyond that she didn’t owe them anything. They were a sea of snooty faces with hyphened names and “the third” tacked onto the ends of their names. They were legacy people, rich people her family had no business with, in her opinion. Her fingers itched for her journal, to write the hateful words brewing in her mind, threatening to spill from her lips.
These people were the reason her parents were dead.
“Amie, you want us to walk with you?” Faye whispered in her ear. Amie glanced up at the taller of the twins and shook her head, “No, I got this.” She saw Faye look at Jo over her head. All the nameless faces were staring at her as she approached the closed twin caskets. She placed a white rose on each and turned back to the crowd of onlookers, chin set to hold back tears.
Go ahead and think I’m heartless, she thought as she refused to cry. None of you deserved them and you don’t deserve me either.
She forced herself to meet their eyes and silently dared the fakers to pity her, to mourn with her. That was when she saw him, a stranger even stranger than the others, at the back edge of the tent. He stood a head taller than everyone else, his dark hair flattened to his head by the rain and his black eyes enigmatic as they locked with hers. Amie paused and tried to shake the trembling from her limbs. Something hot and electric zapped through her as she looked at him. Thunder crackled in the clouds overhead. She caught her breath as people began to walk past her, breaking her line of sight. Many laid hands on her shoulders, whispering condolences before popping umbrellas to walk through the graveyard. Anger seared through her, hot and ripe at the falseness to their sympathies, the way they just walked away from it all, the way they could walk away.
Amie looked past the black dressed drones for the strange stranger and found him still hovering outside the tent among the other graves. This time there was a faint smirk pulling his mouth up in one corner. Again that quick zap of electricity tingled through her fingertips. She clenched her fists and pushed her way past the coats and umbrellas and their clammy hands. The strange stranger’s eyebrows shot up at her approach, eyes widening a fraction, though his smirk never left his lips. She narrowed her eyes and watched him withdraw something from his thick duster coat. But before she could utter a word, twin figures in brightly colored frocks darted to stand in front of her.
“There you are!” Jo said her wide blue eyes red about the rims.
Faye placed a firm hand around Amie’s elbow and steered her back to her parent’s coffins. “Our parents grabbed us before we could rescue you from them.” She practically spat the word and Amie almost smiled at the protective vehemence in Faye’s tone.
She glanced back over her shoulder to find the strange stranger and scowled. He must have taken the opportunity to split.
“Good riddance,” she muttered under her breath.
“You okay, Amie?” Jo asked from her other side, concern evident in the crease in her brow.
“I’m fine. Just ready to go home,” she lied.
to be continued…
Please feel free to leave a comment below if you are excited about a Silver Hollow sequel. What would you most like to see happen with and to our characters? Love your feedback!
Jennifer Silverwood 