With ‘The Blackwood Crusade’ due for its chance in the spotlight on Sunday, I thought it would be wise to pay some attention to my firstborn in case it begins to feel neglected!
Tag: teen
OUT NOW! ‘The Curtain Twitcher’s Handbook’ (Kindle Edition)
A young adult love story with the odd ghost and some very petulant curtains. Out now on Amazon.
The Curtain Twitcher’s Handbook: Tip #1
A short guide to the art of curtain-twitching.
INSPIRATION: The Saturday Girl
I was a Saturday Girl once. There was a small cafe in our small town, made popular by a long-running TV series. So many girls from school undertook their job-baptism of fire here, and the kitchen was a seething microcosm of alliances, hostilities and hormones, interspersed with coke floats and cheese and pickle sandwiches.
INSPIRED
They pushed me to the top of the stairs and handed me a torch.
“Go on,” said the girl called Suzanna, “They’re on the top shelf.”
I peered down. It was pitch black at the bottom. The light from the cafe filtered down, reducing with every step. I flicked the torch on and gritted my teeth.
This was clearly the beginning of some kind of war.
“Come on, new girl.”
An hour into the job and I was already losing.
BIT BY BIT (Foxfires VI)
Foxfires
FOXFIRES I FOXFIRES II FOXFIRES III FOXFIRES IV FOXFIRES V
Chapter Four
Tuesday Night
“The stew’s ruined, but you should have been home a half hour ago.”
“Sorry, love.”
“Sorry, Gran.”
Emily sat near the Rayburn, the clothes on her back so warm they were almost burning her chilled skin. Her thawing fingers tingled as she dug a fork into her heaped plate. The stew wasn’t ruined. It was delicious. Grandma was full of false threats. She was incapable of handing out punishments to her loved ones. Even now, full of her own family’s betrayal, she was helping Granddad to more cabbage.
One thing Emily didn’t miss about home was her mother’s cooking. Her mother wasn’t built for cooking. She was designed for looking pretty and saying witty things, but those rare skills definitely had their place. Emily got the impression that her grandparents did not wholly approve of the match their son had made. The odd remark here and there about homemaking and ‘don’t cry over anything that can’t cry over you’. But, though the cooking hadn’t been great at home, Emily felt she hadn’t missed out on anything. The social whirl of her girlhood was something she treasured. Especially now, stuck in the middle of nowhere.
“Any news from the village? I haven’t had the time to go down for three days.” Grandma said.
It was one of her pointed ‘poor me’ remarks that generally passed uncommented, much to Grandma’s chagrin. Emily opened her mouth to tell everything and Granddad fixed her with a meaningful stare.
“Not really,” she said, and shoved another mouthful of stew in to stop any more words coming out.
