R. Lee Smith's Blog, page 31

Weekend Writer Warrior 8/3

The Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop is a weekly event in which writers are invited to share eight sentences from one of their works for other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment on. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! And remember to enter my Gann Giveaway if you like what you’re reading! When the book is finally ready for publication, one lucky winner will be drawn to win a free ecopy. All you have to do is leave a comment and tell me you want to enter.

“So I went to see the Manifestors,” she said. She sounded, to her own ears, a lot like the pinch-faced old man at the orientation seminar, trying to be professional while still getting through something deeply unpleasant and perhaps contagious as quickly as possible. Everyone knew about the Manifest Destiny Society and their ship; she said it anyway. “They’ve still got room. I guess they’re having some trouble filling their quota for young women, so we’re actually guaranteed a contract if we apply.”

“They’re having trouble because it’s never been tested!”

“Sure it has. They’ve Tunneled out to all the other planets.”

Hump Day Hook 7/31

Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Welp, this is the last snippet-post of July and as we can all see by looking at my Work In Progress bar, I’m not ready to go live on the book yet. So it looks like the Gann Giveaway will continue into August! (pause for cheers) To further motivate me to finish the book before September, an additional winner will be drawn when the time to publish is nigh upon me! (pause for slightly louder cheers) To recap, all of my snippets for Hump Day Hook, Sneak Peek Sundays and WeWriWa will be taken from The Last Hour of Gann, beginning with the first word on the first page way back on July the 1st, and picking up right where the previous snippet leaves off. Each time I make a post, you may enter to win a free ecopy of The Last Hour of Gann when it is published. Just remember that all my books contain graphic violence and strong sexual content, so you must explicitly tell me so each and every time you enter.

Enough about that. On with the scene in the Bierce family kitchen…

“—if you can’t even admit you’ll be a whore?”

“I can do it,” whispered Nicci, but she wouldn’t look at Amber.

“Maybe you could, but you couldn’t do it here, and you had better be sure that’s the way you want to go because they don’t let you stop anymore once you start. You’ll have to get the barcode and you’ll be subject to scans at any time. They’ll cancel your insurance—look at me, Nicci—and garnish your wages to pay for the state insurance and all your monthly tests, plus the initial registration and the operation where they spay you, and you know it took Mama five years to pay all that off. And in the meantime, where will you be living? Because you still won’t be able to pay the new lease on a state-paid whore’s salary and this place will still be just as gone.”

“Stop it!” Nicci shouted. “Stop bullying me! I’m not leaving!”

Amber pressed her lips together and folded her hands. She told herself she wasn’t a bully. “What are you going to do, Nicci? Where are you going to go?”

“Shut up!” Nicci beat her palms on the table loud enough that old Mrs. Simon in the next apartment banged her cane on the wall. “I’m not leaving! You can’t make me leave, Amber! You can’t make me leave the planet!”

“I’m not making you do anything,” said Amber, knowing damned well it was a lie. “I’m just telling you that I’m going, with or without you.”

Nicci stared, her mouth working in silent horror.

“There is no other place for us to go,” said Amber.

And she waited, but Nicci still couldn’t find anything to say, so she picked up the brochure and started to flip through it.

Sunday Sneak Peek 7/28

 

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Sneak Peek, like all my snippet-producing posts for the immediate future, is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where yesterday’s WeWriWa left off and continuing with Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook. So read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

“You want to do like Mama did,” said Amber, ruthless and calm as her stomach churned. “You want to be a whore.”

“I…”

“How are you going to fuck men—”

That flinch again.

“—for money—”

Nicci broke, tried to get up. Amber caught her by the wrist again and held on in spite of her sister’s squirming efforts to tug free. She hated this, hated herself, but she kept on talking and her voice never shook. Sometimes you had to say the bad stuff, right, Mama? Right.

Weekend Writer Warrior 7/27

The Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop is a weekly event in which writers are invited to share eight sentences from one of their works for other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment on. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Today’s WeWriWa is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook left off and continuing with tomorrow’s Sunday Sneak Peek. Feel free to catch up if you’re just joining me, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway! One lucky winner will be drawn just as soon as I’m ready for the book to go live. You can keep an eye on my progress with the Work-In-Progress widget in the sidebar. Just remember that, like all my books, The Last Hour of Gann contains graphic violence and strong sexual content, so if you want to enter the drawing, you have to tell me so each and every time you leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

“We can file for a four-week extension,” said Amber. “That’s what we can do, and only if we can prove we can pay the lease at the end of those four weeks. That’s all they care about and that’s all they have to care about. Everything else is on us.”

“Then I’ll do like Mama did! I’m not leaving!”

“You mean you want to be a whore.”

Nicci flinched; Amber did not.

Hump Day Hook 7/24

Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!  Today’s Hook, like all my snippets from July 1st straight on until the book gets published, comes from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where last Sunday Sneak Peek left off and continuing on Saturday’s WeWriWa. Feel free to catch up and if you like what you read, don’t forget to leave a comment and tell me you want to enter my Gann Giveaway! One lucky winner will be drawn from the ol’ hat and win a free ecopy of my book!

“And we probably won’t be able to live together. Not in the same dorm room, maybe not even in the same complex.”

“I can’t be alone!”

“You won’t be alone, Nicci. You’ll be rooming with up to seven other women, they’ll just be strangers.”

“No!”

“We’ll lose our jobs and have to work a state-job as partial payment for those dorms, where our salary cap will be half what it is now, so once we move into those dorms, we are never getting out.”

“No!”

“Yes, dammit!” Amber snapped. “These are the facts, Nicci! We can’t stay here and nothing we do can change that. This place is all over. Maybe if we had enough time, we could find another place we could afford on just what we’re making now, but you know goddamned well that we’d end up on a first-served list and we could be there for years! Where are we going to live in the meantime, huh?”

“You could get more time!” Nicci snatched at the lease, tearing it in her haste. “Did you even ask? There has to be a number that…that you could call and they’ll give us more time if they know we’re…on a list or…”

Sunday Sneak Peek 7/21

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Don’t forget to enter the Gann Giveaway if you like what you’ve been reading! One lucky winner will be drawn when the book is ready to be published. Until then, simply leave a comment on any post between July 1st until the book’s due date and tell me you want to enter. It’s that easy!

“Then we’re going to have to go on the state.” She had a pamphlet for that option, too. She tossed it on the table in front of Nicci with an ugly slap of sound. More a booklet than a pamphlet, really, with none of the pretty fonts and colorful pictures the Manifestors put in their own brochure. “Read it,” she said.

“No!”

“Okay. I’ll just run down the bullet points for you. To begin with, it’ll take six to eight weeks before we’re accepted, if we’re accepted, so we’ll still lose this place. However, once we’re homeless, there shouldn’t be any trouble getting a priority stamp on our application to move into a state-run housing dorm, so there’s that.”

Nicci put both hands to her face and sobbed harder. Amber’s own eyes tried to sting, but she wouldn’t let them. Crying was a pointless little-girl thing to do and it hadn’t fixed one goddamn thing since it had been invented by the very first pointless little girl. Problems only got solved when you did something about them.

“We’ll only be allowed to take one standard-size carry-case each,” said Amber evenly, watching her baby sister cry, “and we can’t afford a storage pod, so most of this stuff will have to be sold or left behind.”

“Stop it! Please, just stop!”

Weekend Writer Warrior 7/20

The Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop is a weekly event in which writers are invited to share eight sentences from one of their works for other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment on. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! And remember to enter my Gann Giveaway if you like what you’re reading! When the book is finally ready for publication, one lucky winner will be drawn to win a free ecopy. All you have to do is leave a comment and tell me you want to enter.

Nicci gave her a wet, blank stare and moved the papers around some more. “I don’t…Where…What do you want to do?”

Amber picked up the brochure and moved it a little closer to her sister’s trembling hands. “I went to see the Manifestors.”

Nicci stared at her. “No,” she said. Not in a tough way, maybe, but not as feebly as she’d been saying things either. “Amber, no!”

Hump Day Hook 7/17

I missed last week’s hook! Oh noes! But I’m back today and will try extra-hard not to do that again. For those of you just tuning in, all my Hooks, WeWriWas and Sneak Peeks starting from July 1st are coming from my upcoming book, The Last Hour of Gann, so scroll back a bit to catch up and if you like what you read, feel free to leave a comment and ask to enter my Gann Giveaway. Your name will go into the ol’ hat and when the book is ready to go live, one lucky winner will be drawn to receive a free ecopy! Good luck!

Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

“I can get another job!” Nicci insisted.

“Yeah, you can. So can I. And they’ll be two more full-time shifts at minimum wage under that fucking salary cap because we dropped out of school. And that means that the most—the absolute most, Nicci—that we can make between us will be not quite half what we’d need for the new rent.”

“What…? N-no…” Nicci fumbled at the papers on the table, staring without comprehension at the neat, lawyerly print on the new lease. “They…They can’t do that!”

“Yes, they can. They did. Maybe they couldn’t raise Mama’s rent, but they can sure do it to us.”

“How do they expect us to pay this much every month?”

“They don’t. They expect to evict us. They want to get a better class of person in here,” she added with a trace of wry humor, “and I can’t say I blame them.”

“But…But where are we supposed to go?”

“They don’t care,” said Amber, shrugging. “And they don’t have to care. We do. And we’ve only got about four weeks to figure it out, so you really need to—” She broke it off there and made herself take a few breaths, because stop whining wasn’t going to move the situation anywhere but from bad to worse. “We need to think,” she finished, “about what we can do to help ourselves.”

Sunday Sneak Peek 7/14

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Sneak Peek, like all my snippet-producing posts for the immediate future, is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where yesterday’s WeWriWa left off and continuing with Wednesday’s Hump Day Hook (unless I forget again, which is possible). Readers ought to know that there’s a scene-break between yesterday’s snippet and today’s. So read, enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway!

* * *

 

She didn’t say anything until they got back to the apartment. Then Amber sat her baby sister at the kitchen table and put two short stacks of papers in front of her. One was the eviction notice, the new lease, and a copy of their mother’s insurance policy. The other was an information packet with the words Manifest Destiny printed in starry black and white letters on the first page.

“Please,” said Nicci, trying to squirm away. “Not right now, okay?”

“Right now,” said Amber. She sat down on the other side of the table, then had to reach out and catch her sister’s hand to keep her from escaping. It was not a gentle grip, but Amber kept it in spite of Nicci’s wince and teary, reproachful look. Sometimes, the bad stuff needed to be said. That was the one thing Mary Bierce used to say that Amber did believe.

“We’re going to lose this place,” Amber said bluntly. “No matter what we do—”

“Don’t say that!”

“—we’re going to lose it.”

Weekend Writer Warrior 7/13

Yikes! I missed Hump Day Hook on Wednesday. I wish I could say I had a good reason, but I just plain forgot. I usually schedule these things in advance so I don’t have to remember them and as a foreseeable result, I also forget to do the scheduling part. One of these days, I really need to get my act together.

Anyhoo, it’s Weekend Writer Warrior Day! I remembered! For those of you who don’t know, the Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop is a weekly event in which writers are invited to share eight sentences from one of their works for other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment on. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love!

Like all snippet-producing posts this month, today’s WeWriWa is from The Last Hour of Gann, picking up where last Sunday’s Sneak Peek left off and continuing with tomorrow’s Sunday Sneak Peek. Feel free to catch up if you’re just joining me, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you want to enter my Gann Giveaway! One lucky winner will be drawn just as soon as I’m ready for the book to go live. You can keep an eye on my progress with the Work-In-Progress widget in the sidebar. Just remember that, like all my books, The Last Hour of Gann contains graphic violence and strong sexual content, so if you want to enter the drawing, you have to tell me so each and every time you leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

 

And Amber would nod, because sometimes if you agreed enough early on, the real shouting never got started, but privately she had her doubts. Privately she thought, even then at the age of eight and especially as she got older and Bo Peep Bierce grew more and more embittered, that it didn’t prove a whole lot to say that men thought all women were whores when the only men you saw in a day were the ones…well, buying a whore. If you want to hang with a better class of man, Amber would think as she nodded along with her mother’s rants, quit whoring.

Not that you could quit these days. But it had still been her choice to start.

And these probably weren’t the most respectful thoughts to be having at your mother’s funeral. Amber gave Nicci’s shaking shoulders a few more pats and tried to think of good things, happy memories, but there weren’t many. Her mind got to wandering back toward the eviction and the Manifestors. It had better be today, she decided, listening to Nicci cry.

After the funeral. But today.