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Tag: six sentence sunday

Weekend Writing Warrior 2/7/16 #8Sunday

This month’s excerpts will be from the next stand-alone short story I plan to release (still working on the title). I don’t have a blurb yet either, but it’s about an American guy’s up-and-down relationship with a French girl.

This is the opening.

* * * * * * * * * *

Daniel looks around his apartment one last time. All personal signs of his life here are carefully tucked into his duffel bag, into the small backpack that serves as his carry on. A few things remain: the bed he shared with Mireille; the kitchen pans that belong to the apartment’s owner, the ones that Daniel used to cook Mireille dinner because most of the time she forgot to eat unless he reminded her. She cooked for him in that kitchen too, a few times, but she was a horrible cook, always burning things, using her own combinations instead of following recipes. France was supposed to be known for its culinary prowess, and yet Daniel had the fortune to fall in love with the only woman in the country who couldn’t even boil water without filling the apartment with smoke.

He memorizes the apartment, filling in Mireille. She’s been gone for months, and now he’s leaving too. He takes a deep breath to clear his mind of the past, to focus on his future back home in the States – a future strangely empty, after years filling it with plans and goals. Now he isn’t sure what he’s going back to or what he’s going back for.

* * * * * * * * * *

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Weekend Writing Warriors 4/5/15 #8Sunday

New month, new story. For April I’ll be pulling from a fun historical short story (possibly novella?) I hope to have out this spring; “Spice Pirates.”

Rosamaria’s sick brother just wants to be a pirate, so she enlists the help of her friends Origano, Clovio, and Anisa to take him on a pirate adventure. But then the REAL pirates show up….

* * * * * * * * * * *

Origano’s ship arrived in the harbor at midmorning. There was nothing auspicious about it; nothing to portend that fortune and disaster would fall on the town or that the lives of its most prominent families would soon be irreparably altered.

The ship was an average merchant vessel: a bare-bones crew collected from ports around the world; cargo of varying worth from those same ports that they hoped to sell for enough of a profit to reach the next port, or at least enough to buy an evening of much-needed debauchery; a dozen or so passengers; and Origano.

He hopped off the gangway onto the dock, a satchel over his shoulder, a straw hat jauntily on his head, and a spring in his step. He’d made it safely across the ocean and was now free in the New World, with no overbearing family to tell him what to do or what to be. Free to find his destiny.

His stomach rumbled. Before his destiny, he must find lunch.

* * * * * * * * * * *

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/27 #sixsunday

This is the last official Six Sentence Sunday, through the official website.  However, I like the idea of this and plan to continue, even if no one else is playing along.

This week’s six come from a story I’ve been working on for awhile, about an American guy working in France who falls in love with a crazy French girl and reflects on their relationship as he’s heading back to the States.

Daniel’s train at the Avignon station arrives and he boards, finding a seat in a crowded car towards the rear. A petite older woman plops down next to him. He ignores her as studiously as she ignores him although he wants her to ask him how he’s doing, to notice his crushed heart and sympathize over the details, not to pull out a novel as if he’s not dying inside next to her.

He turns to the window as outside the station falls away. He’s hit by a sudden impulse to jump off the train before it accelerates too much, to find Mira, to ignore his soon-to-expire visa and spend the rest of his life with her in his adopted country. Instead, he closes his eyes and lets the train pull him away from her.

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/20 #sixsunday

Today’s six are from the novel I’m currently querying, The Lone Wolf.  Kasey, the MC, has just had a huge fight with her husband.  She told him she wanted him out; he had a different idea.

He opened the box to reveal a small ring, a simple band with alternating diamonds and sapphires set in it, and asked, “Will you take me back?”

I looked down at my husband, feeling nothing for him: no hate, no love, nothing. I thought of his shouted abuse, his slap, the terror I’d felt when he broke my car window; I thought of Andrew, of how it had felt to kiss him; and finally I thought of Aida, crying in the park over the idea of losing her father.

“I don’t know.” I looked him directly in the eyes. “I don’t know.”

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/13 #sixsunday

I’m working on a prequel to my short story “Tim and Sara,” featuring a character from “The Kindness of Strangers” who seems to be popping up more and more in my stuff.  Sara lives with her twin brother, Levi. She’s bipolar, schizophrenic, or just completely crazy, but very manipulative too.  In this scene, she’s told her brother she wants to get a job.

“No,” Levi says with no thought, no hesitation.

“Please?” She gives him her puppy dog face, with big eyes and pouting lips. “You know I can behave if I want to.”

This is news to him. “So your entire life, you’ve been a pain in the ass because you wanted to?” 

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/6 #sixsunday

Today’s six are from a short story I’m working on.  A woman comes home to find an old boyfriend sitting in her kitchen, one who left unexpectedly three years ago and hasn’t contacted her since.

“You left, without a word, and now you expect me to kiss you, to love you like before? I’ve moved on, Michael. I had to move on, because I assumed you did too.” She tore herself from him and marched to the wall, flipped the light switch, and gasped.

His face was bruised, with a large gash running across his left cheek, his right arm curled protectively around his side, and dried blood caked his shirt. “What happened to you?”

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Six Sentence Sunday 12/30 #sixsunday

Today’s six are from this year’s NaNo novel.

Eric, one of the MC’s, has fallen in love with Mariella.  She’s engaged to another guy, Dennis, but Eric decides to reveal his feelings anyways.  Decide having feelings for him too, Mariella quickly turns him down and lists the reasons she loves Dennis.

Her words hit Eric in the stomach. He’s smart and funny too, and takes care of Mariella; hasn’t he shown that, time and again? But this last bit – he can’t compete. He’s not a good man, not like Dennis is.

“I’m sorry,” she says as she takes a step towards him, fingers twitching at her side. “There’s no point in wondering what might have been, because it is what it is.”

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Six Sentence Sunday 12/23 #sixsunday

Today’s six are from my short story “Small Town Life,” just published a couple days ago in Shadow Road Quarterly.  The MC, 17-year-old Andrew, has finally stood up to his abusive stepfather.

Mama looked at us both, me standing above my stepdad with blood dripping down my face, him laying on the floor holding his own nose. She was sobbing of course, her reaction whenever I disappointed her. I disappointed her a lot.

“Sorry, Mama,” I said as I looked at Gary on the floor. His stomach was exposed as he lay there so I kicked him, not hard but hard enough.

“Don’t you ever fucking touch me again,” I told him, and I walked out the door.

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Six Sentence Sunday 12/16 #sixsunday

Today’s six are from my novel, The Lone Wolf (which I’ve let sit for a couple months, and upon rereading, it’s actually pretty decent).  Kasey bumps into Andrew, a guy she still has strong feelings for and, unbeknownst to him, the father of her unborn kid.  The holidays are pretty hard on Andrew, so he resorts to heavy drinking to cope.

I laid my hand on his arm and asked, “You okay?”

“I’m….yeah, I’m fine,” he said, then took a deep breath, slowly exhaled the faint scent of alcohol. “Look, I gotta go, but maybe I’ll see you around, okay?”

And with that, he was gone. I considered chasing after him, but why? He knew where I was if he needed me, and I’d told him I was there for him; what more could I do?

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Six Sentence Sunday 12/9 #sixsunday

Today’s six are from a story I wrote about a musician trying to get his song-writing abilities back, and the girl who inspires him.  In this scene, she’s frustrated that her friends are too overprotective of her, and he’s trying to make her feel better about it.

He grabs her wrist again and taps out an impromptu beat. “This is what matters, what you feel in here. Listen to this, not some jerk guy in the past, or a wannabe rockstar trying to spout off philosophical crap to impress a girl who’s somehow gotten the music flowing in him again. This.”

Lisa stares at him and he feels self-conscious in a way he never feels onstage, even with an audience of hundreds. Then she smiles and says, “You’re trying to impress me?”

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