Weekend Writing Warriors December 13, 2015

     
    

Hello all.  Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, a weekly bloghop.  Each week, participants sign up HERE at wewriwa.com, then post 8 to 10 sentences of their work, published or unpublished, to go live between noon, Saturday, and 9:00 AM Sunday EST. Then we visit each other and read, comment, critique, encourage--all those things that do a solitary writer's heart good. 
              Snippet Sunday group from facebook--not us, but many of our participants do both, can be found HERE

This week, I'm excerpting from a short story called, "Jack and the Christmas Journey."

It's the beginning of chapter three. The MC, sixty-something year old Tildie--who was widowed three years ago, is not happy about her little group of friends dragging her out of her house to go Christmas shopping. It's been three years since she lost her husband Harp, and she's still working through it all, teetering between grief, and a need to get on with her life. She is the POV character. Carol, Lindy, and Sissy are her friends. Ben is a man from her past. It's five days before Christmas.

The Snippet:
     By the time they sat down to order food, by Tildie's estimate it was well past lunchtime. She needed to collect her thoughts and catch her breath. They chose The Brick Oven right in the mall, rather than fighting traffic on the way to one of the eateries downtown.
     From where they sat, they could watch passersby, and see most of the restaurant. They were chatting away, commenting on what people were wearing, when a familiar face appeared among the mall walkers. Ben
     Carol sighed. "Man oh man, I think he looks good with gray hair."
     Lindy chirped, "He'd look good with green hair, or purple hair, or even no hair."
     Sissy said through a smile, ""The man's still got it." 


That's it. Any comments or criticisms are greatly appreciated. I learn from them all--for the next time--even though this one is already published.

Before I go any further, I want to apologize for not making the rounds last week.  I will do better this week. A week ago Friday, we buried my 63 year old sister. She'd had a heart attack. She was in reasonably good health. A shock to all of us-- there were 8 kids in my family. 

Saturday, I had a holiday gathering scheduled. I went ahead with it--it was actually better to stay busy. By Saturday evening, I was flat out exhausted. Life is like that sometimes. I needed a day to rest before the week started all over again. And as much as I love wewriwa-- and all of you dear-to-my-heart participants, I rested.

Then this week, my first ever published work happened. I signed my first contract. Went through editing passes. The whole process is surreal. Pinch me. Reviews... Someone talk me down from this cloud. I keep wishing I could bottle the feeling--so I could open it later when there's bad reviews somewhere along the road of my writing career.  :-)

Thank you, Victory Tales Press, and their acquisition editor, Karen Michelle Nutt

 I'm pretty proud of this.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Romance