Teaser Tuesday
Whew! Yesterday I ran all day long. Trimmed my hair, printed postcard labels and stamps, went to the dentist, off to Staples, then home to print, print, print. I got all the flyers done and some school visit brochures to hand out on Thursday. Today I have to put my excerpt booklets together (for people who might want to buy later, or read excerpts from books I don't have on hand).
It's August, right? I have to keep checking the calendar, because on Saturday it turned chilly here, and it's still cold. We turned off the AC four days ago. It started raining on Sunday...it's still raining. Not drizzling, really raining. It's in the sixties here, and I'm wearing sweatpants. Seriously, it feels like October. But the weather people say we'll be back to August by Saturday.
I've got good stuff scheduled for the blog in the future. A Virtual Book Tour stop for another author, interviews, Featured Indie Publishers. Does anyone know if you can post to the future? Like enter a post and schedule when it goes up? I'd love to do that.
Anyway, here's your teaser for Tuesday. Today we're going retro, back to TALISMAN OF ZANDRIA. Anyone who's read RETURN TO ZANDRIA will find this little snippet interesting. Kind of...foreshadowing....
After school, Ivy followed a group of children who lived in her neighborhood. They weren’t her friends, but because they lived on her block she always walked behind them. They didn’t notice her.
Two dark-haired boys - twins named Justin and Jonathan - who lived next door to Ivy, threw a backpack back and forth as they walked. The backpack belonged to a girl named Lori, who lived across the street from Ivy. Lori ran between the boys, trying to get it back. “It’s mine, give it back,” Lori cried desperately. Practically in tears, she turned and ran right into Ivy. The two girls tumbled to the ground. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Lori. She helped Ivy to her feet.
“It’s okay,” Ivy mumbled, her eyes to the ground.
“Do I know you?” Lori asked. “Are you in my class?”
Before Ivy could even nod her head, the other girl ran off to chase after the boys. Ivy sighed deeply and continued to follow them until she came to her own doorstep.
Most days, Ivy started her homework right away, so it would be finished before her parents got home from work. Today she dropped her books on the living room sofa - she would put them away later - picked up the apple her mother had left her on the kitchen counter and went straight out the back door.
It was dark and heavily wooded behind her house. A path wound its way from Ivy’s backyard to the playground behind her school. Her parents told her never to take the path home from school, because they didn’t want her to walk in the woods alone. They said that when she was older that she could use the path. But that had been several years ago and they never said how much older.
When Ivy got to the woods, she stood in the same place she had seen the fairy the day before. Ivy’s hands shook. She had never disobeyed her parents before. She had been down the path several times with her father, when they used to go for nature walks - a long time ago. Sadly, her father never took her on walks anymore because he was always too busy. Ivy wasn’t sure she remembered the way.
She stood there for five whole minutes and debated whether or not this was really a good idea. Finally, she mustered up what little courage she had, which was mostly just curiosity, and stepped onto the path. As long as she stayed on the path, she told herself, she would be all right.
The forest was packed with trees and dimly lit. Sparse sunlight filtered through the dense canopy. When Ivy looked to her left or right, she couldn’t see very far into the thick underbrush growing on the forest floor.
She crept along the path, looking around her as she went. Everything looked normal. She saw no bright light, no fairies and no sign of anything strange. She kept on the main path and ignored the other, smaller paths that branched off. She was breaking the rules, but didn’t want to break them too badly. Besides, she didn’t want to get lost in there. Being in the forest made her stomach queasy.
Ivy heard the sound of branches breaking and stopped dead. She listened, holding her breath. A pair of squirrels ran across the path, around in a circle, and back into the woods. Ivy breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m being silly,” she told herself aloud but not very convincingly. “There is nothing here to be afraid of. Just birds, squirrels, and rabbits.”
Ivy continued along the path for what seemed like hours, still seeing nothing out of the ordinary. She did, however, see three deer, more squirrels and a fox. Ready to go home, she turned a corner. There was a break in the trees with a clearing beyond. She went towards it, and came out into the schoolyard.
Ivy sighed. She had traveled all this way, broken her parents’ rule about being in the woods alone, and hadn’t seen the fairy. Ivy was very disappointed and her legs hurt. It was much further, the path was much longer than she had thought it would be. She walked over to one of the benches on the playground, sat down, and exhaled slowly. The schoolyard was deserted, and the sun was low in the sky. If she wanted to make it home before her mother returned from work, she needed to get going soon.
Ivy stood, weary, and turned back to the path. It was getting dark, and the woods would soon be too dark to see. The Not-Very-Brave in her decided it would be better to take the long way around, sticking to the well-lit and familiar streets. So she put her back to the woods and started across the playground, toward the front of the building. She had just rounded the corner and was headed for the sidewalk when her breath caught in her throat.
Three of the older kids from her school stood directly in her path. Ivy recognized them as Bernie MacNamara, Howard Slack and Angelo Giordano. They were sixth graders whose favorite pastime was pushing younger and smaller people around. Fortunately for Ivy, their backs were to her. She dashed back behind the wall of the school.
They were right in her way, and she couldn’t sneak around them, they might see her. She couldn’t go back the other way, the path was too dark. So Ivy stayed right where she was. As the moments ticked by, she became more and more anxious. She couldn’t hear the boys anymore, so she decided to peek out and see where they were. Seeing nothing, she stepped out from behind the wall and walked toward the pavement. She was almost there when...
“Look what we have here, boys.”