1st Sunday Snippets: 2012

Rock Creek in December, view from main cabin window.

Happy 2012 Everyone!


Hope your holiday season was as fabulous as mine. I got two of the best presents EVER for Christmas-- a Droid 3 (from myself) and a Kindle Touch (from hubby). We spent Christmas weekend with friends and family. The week between Christmas and New Years we went to our little cabin in Eastern Oregon for some well-needed R & R, which in my case means sitting by the fire reading with a cup of hot coco in my hand.

Guess what I took with me?

My Kindle, of course! (Will talk more about e-readers next week.)

I bought six books to take with me:

The Hunger Games Trilogy (YA) by Suzanne Collins
Tempest Rising (YA) by Tracy Deebs
Radiant Desire (Adult) by Inara Scott
All I Want for Christmas (Adult) by Ros Clarke

I read the last two books of the Hunger Games Trilogy. Holy macaroni! I couldn't put them down for nothing. The only other books I've read that captured me this way are the Harry Potter and Twilight series. At night I would dream about the characters and the challenges they faced. During the day when I wasn't reading, every thought would lead to either Katnis, Peeta, or Haymitch. It's a good thing hubby already read them and loved them too, because for two days that is all that I talked about. What a brilliant series and a sweet ending.

I enjoyed the other books as well, but Hunger Games pretty much took the cake. If you haven't read them, shame on you!!!!

So it's the first of the year and usually people make resolutions around this time. For the last five or so years, I haven't bothered with resolutions, because well, they don't always work the way I would like them. What I've learned is to focus my intentions on something I would like to achieve and so far I've had better success.

This year my focus is on getting published. I'm super close. My writing has gotten so much better in the last 12 months. I see my mark and the distance is diminishing. The one hurdle I have to conquer is editing. I HATE editing, however, I know if I'm going to achieve my goal I must suck in my gut, straighten my back, sit my butt down, and freaking EDIT. All of yesterday leading to the New Years party, I sat down at my computer and editing my NANO project. So far I'm over 25% done, which by the way is the most I've ever accomplished on any of my manuscripts. Since that is what I'm focusing on at the present my snippet will be the first ten lines.

Scents of musty old soil surrounding the grave and the woodsy musk of the nearby forest tickle my nose. The chill in the air blends with the coldness of the rough stone pressing against my palms and thighs. Goosebumps ripple across my bare flesh. Where had the humid Romanian summer night gone? Right now it feels more like I've been thrown into an icebox than hiding behind a gravestone. Maybe the stories are true, this graveyard is haunted. 

Cool.

I grin like a silly girl in the dark. But only for a moment as I hear gravel crackling under the weight of footsteps. I let my body lie flat on the slab of stone covering the grave below me. It has the largest headstone of all the graves in the forbidden area, which makes it the perfect place to conceal myself.

Thanks so much for reading. Cheers,

Melania