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Welcome back! It's #SnippetSunday time again and I'm continuing with Out of Time, a story that follows a young woman searching for a lost family history. In the haunted town of Benton, she discovers that past and present memories overlap, and that ghosts aren't always what they seem.
Last week there was one person who guessed what was going on. I think this week and next will be a surprise to most. Well, maybe not? It's hard to pull one over on savvy readers and authors! Please make sure to visit the Snippet Sunday Facebook group and read the other snippets posted by authors. They're all amazing and include a variety of genres. Without Kayla willing it, the woman brought her face closer to the mirror, bringing it so near the glass that the exhale of her breath left a hint of condensation. Kayla saw brown irises, specked with green and shades of yellow. Short, thick eyelashes rimmed the eyes, permanently highlighting them in dark brown. What gorgeous eyes. “Why, thank you; I’ve always thought my lashes were too short.” The woman pulled back from the mirror. Kayla’s surprise at getting a response did not reflect on the woman’s face. Instead, she looked calm. She pulled her hair back, thick strands so unlike Kayla’s own, slipped through her fingers. She straightened her shift, and Kayla felt the coarseness of the fabric as if she touched it herself. “I thought there was someone there,” the woman continued. “What’s your name?”
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Welcome back! It's #SnippetSunday time again and I'm continuing with Out of Time, a short story I wrote for an anthology contest. I'll learn by next week if I'll be one of two newbie authors to be selected. But hey, if I'm not, no worries as I will definitely release this story. I love it! And it also ties nicely into the world-building of my current series.
Please make sure to visit the Snippet Sunday Facebook group and read the other snippets posted by authors. They're all amazing and include a variety of genres. Out of Time follows a young woman searching for a lost family history. In the haunted town of Benton, she discovers that past and present memories overlap, and that ghosts aren't always what they seem. Her fingertips touched a delicate doily. She’d have to get a manicure next week when she got home. How the hell had her nails gotten so bad? There was dirt logged under most of them. Her hands balled into fists, hiding the offending objects. A ring. A simple band of gold wrapped around her ring finger on her left hand. What the? I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming. She looked up and was stunned to see a different face looking back at her in the mirror: big brown eyes, long wavy hair. She wore an old-fashioned shift, plain white, light cotton. The ties in front had come undone and it rested asymmetrically on her shoulders. The face smiled, as if in on a secret. Welcome to my next installment of #SnippetSunday. Please make sure you visit the Snippet Sunday Facebook group (here's the link) to read other amazing authors!
Out of Time follows a young woman searching for a lost family history. In the haunted town of Benton, she discovers that past and present memories overlap, and that ghosts aren't always what they seem. Last week, Kayla was thinking about Adeline, her great-great-great-great Aunt, wondering if she had made it to the town of Benton so many years before. I love this next part of the story and I hope you like it, too. Her head hurt, a deep, dull pain. Her eyes opened but squinted to keep out the light. Blurry. She was off the bed, her feet shuffling across the floor. When had she put on socks? She stood in front of a dresser, her hands steadying her sway as a stab of pain shot through her temples. She hadn’t had a hangover like this since her college days. I don’t remember drinking last night. Her eyes opened more, now better used to the daylight coming into the room. She leaned on the dresser, her hands resting on dark, solid wood. She must have been really tired the night before because she didn’t remember it being such a dark wood.  I LOVE to sit at my computer on a Sunday morning, coffee in hand and slippers on the feet, and explore what #SnippetSunday authors have to share. The Snippet Sunday Facebook group is a supportive community of authors who share eight to ten sentences of their work every week. Make sure to stop by and see what they have to share! Here's a link to the group >
And thank YOU so much for stopping by! Out of Time continues from where I left off last week. I cheated and posted a wee bit more than ten sentences - but it's the end of this part. Next week's snippet shifts into a new scene. Hope you enjoy! Apropos of nothing, how the heck did this week go by so quickly??? And tonight we're even losing more time because of Daylight Saving Time. It never made sense to me that it was called DST - in the spring and summer we have plenty of sunshine. Shouldn't DST be in the fall and winter when the sun's appearance over the horizon is shorter? We should be saving as much daylight as we can. See? Get my thinking? :-) She sighed and looked out the window at contemporary Benton -- she didn’t know what she could possibly find. There was nothing here anymore. Nothing here but ghosts. Kayla changed into her pink long johns and crawled under the covers. Opening her tablet, she pulled up the picture of the letter she’d found in Virginia City. Was the mentioned ‘Addy’, her Aunt Adeline? It was a common name in those days, but when Kayla had first found the reference, she knew this was her Addy. However, now that she’d had time to think about it, she wasn’t as sure. Kayla zoomed in until ‘Addy’ filled the screen. She traced the letters with her finger. “Aunt Adeline. What happened to you?” She reread the letter a few more times, trying to find other clues she might have missed. Eventually her eyes began to close. Giving up, Kayla turned off the light and settled down for the night.  It's #SnippetSunday time! Thank you so much for stopping by. The Snippet Sunday Facebook group is a supportive community of authors who share eight to 10 sentences of their work every week. Make sure to stop by and see what they have to share! Here's a link to the group >
This week I'm continuing with my short story. Out of Time follows a young woman searching for a lost family history. In the haunted town of Benton, she discovers that past and present memories overlap, and that ghosts aren't always what they seem. Before coming to Benton, her trip to Virginia City had been fruitful. For the past five years Kayla had searched for clues to her great-great-great-great aunt’s true story. Family legend held that Adeline Montgomery nee Smith was a prostitute. She’d married, escaped the whore houses in Virginia City, and then moved to Bodie, the infamous, rowdy mining town in the eastern Sierras. Her life did not have a happy ending. Depending on which family member was telling the story, Adeline, or her husband, or both of them were killed by Adeline’s pimp shortly after leaving Virginia City. Kayla had found clues throughout the years – mentions in newspapers in Virginia City, tax records of someone named N. Montgomery, but the clues still didn’t make a whole picture. During this trip, she’d found a letter from 1884, written from one lady-of-the-night to another. It referenced a woman named ‘Addy’ who had moved to the boom town of Benton, California to live in happiness with her new husband. Benton was remote and close to Bodie. Could this be where her aunt and her husband had ended up? |
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