Monday, October 21, 2013

Gwen Gladstone

I really need to set a goal of writing in this blog once a month (I've got something cooking on vampires.). Anyway, I'm a couple weeks away from finishing the first draft of the second Harmony book, Gwen Gladstone. In honor of that, I thought I'd include the prologue in this blog entry.


Prologue







"Gwen?"
My mom stood in front of my locker. Where'd she come from? I didn't see her walk up or anything.
I smiled. "This is a surprise. Let me guess, you're here to take me out to lunch."
Mom didn't return my smile. She stared at me with this sad, sort of frightened look on her face. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”
"What are you talking about?” I wrinkled my nose. “Are you and Dad going on a trip or something? Is he taking you to Tahiti? I know you've been dropping hints like mad."
Mom just stared at me. Her bottom lip quivering. Her eyes watering.
"Mom, what's going on?"
A tear ran down her cheek.
"Mom, say something. You're scaring me."
"Goodbye, Gwen."
"Mom?"
"Uh, Gwen." I turned to see my BFF, Meghan, with a puzzled look on her face.
"Who are you talking to?"
"My mom." I pointed to her. Only she was gone.
I looked back at Meghan.
"Girl, you feeling okay?" she asked.
I didn't know how to answer that. It took a moment, but I managed to laugh it off, say it was a joke. We headed to the cafeteria. Stephanie and Melissa were already there and had saved our usual table. We ate and dished about people like we always did.
The whole time though, I couldn't stop thinking about what happened at my locker. I tried calling Mom after lunch, only I got her voicemail. I hoped she'd call back soon.
After lunch came math, so not my favorite subject. I checked my phone to see if Mom had called. No such luck.
Halfway through class, someone came in and gave a note to the teacher, Ms. Files. Turned out it was for me. I needed to go to the office. Great.
I took my time getting there. When I finally arrived, the first person I saw was Grandma. She sniffed and dabbed her red, puffy eyes with a Kleenex. I went to her, to see what was wrong.
Grandma ran up and hugged me. She started to sob. "Oh, Gwen. Honey."
"What is it? What happened?"
Grandma let go of me. "Your mother. There's been an accident."


Well, that's the beginning of Gwen Gladstone. I'll include the next few chapters as future blog entries. As far as updates go, not much new to report. My contact at the local Barnes and Noble says that the staff are excited about getting Welcome to Harmony in their store. They're still talking about making it their holiday hand-sell. I just have to finish the new edition first (I thought I had it done already. Then, I ordered a hard copy. The printing was way too small.). Oh, well. Back to the proverbial drawing board. By the time, I'm ready to publish Gwen, I'll be an expert at this. 
This time around though, I decided to shell out the money for a custom ISBN number. that will give me more control over my work -- in case the stars align and the old gods decided to smile on me and Harmony gets picked up by an actual publishing company.

DT