Chloe Stowe's Blog: The Words and Madness of Chloe Stowe - Posts Tagged "prologue"

Good morning world! Welcome to our first day of priming your pumps for the release of Peak and Thrust on Monday, November 28! Yes, the big date has been at least penciled in on stone, so we’ll aim our sites on being all ripe and ready for Joey Ballios and Laird Fox on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Are we all excited?

*pause under the weight of complete and total silence… I’m not even hearing crickets here, folks*

Well, yeah, that’s kind of why we’re here. We’ll get those crickets warmed up and singing off their little toes in no time.

It’s sort of apropos really, starting off with the whole world is deathly quiet thing, I mean. That deafening silence of no response, no feedback, no hoots and hollers, no whines and moans from an eager audience, that’s what I, like any author, feel like when I sit down to write those crucial first lines of a novel.

A blank slate.

Scary.

We’re talking freaking out scary, the kind where that flight or fight response kicks in and all your nerve endings get all prickly and nauseous and you start re-thinking your purpose in life and if you’re really worthy of being considered a life form above a slug and even those mute little crickets outside your window are starting to look at you funny…

Ok. That may be just me.

But you get the picture.

Scary.

So how do you start? It’s the Dickens versus King Dilemma.

Do you roll like Dickens and weave and sow words and characters and settings into a world so tight and so real that the reader loses themselves completely within it after the first ten or twenty pages?

Or do you go for the shock value, mold your efforts after Stephen King and throw the reader into the deep end of the story before they have time to even grab one last breath?

For me, when writing a romance that will be vying with all those millions of other romances out there, I go for the Wham Bam Theory.

Right out of the box, I try to hit the reader in the face. Slap a storyline or an emotion on them so fast that they have no choice but to turn to page two.

Then, after a few pages, when they’re hooked but still squiggling on the line, I try to reel them in with a little Dickens. Make them want to stay beyond just having to stay to find out what happens next.

At least that’s plan.

Does it work or not? That’s up to you, the fishes that give life and reason, the beautiful creatures that give slugs like me the courage to string a little line into the literary waters and hope for the best, little lines like these…

Prologue: Detroit

Gunfire erupted from the darkened house.

An unmarked police car sat in the driveway, its blue lights whirling madly in the hot Detroit night

There were no screams, no shouts of fright or anger.

There were no mad rushes, no frantic footsteps fleeing the scene.

And there was only silence on the police radio.

Stillness strangled the night.


If this peek at the Prologue of Peak and Thrust works for you, entices you to come back tomorrow and get a peek at Chapter One, I lay its success entirely at the feet of the Wham Bam Theory… since without that first initial “Wham!” there would be never be the proverbial sweet “Bam! and Thank you, Ma’am!”

I do hope to see you tomorrow, even though I realize now that I have compared you to bugs and big mouth bass… Hmm, I guess there really is a reason why my social life is stunted.

Until tomorrow, tell your friends, family and all your best fishes to come on by and help us warm up a few cricket toes.

Sincerely,

Chloe Stowe, the slug in today’s little drama
Chloe Stowe

Welcome one and all to the “Special Edition: Have You Writhed Today?” blog.

To celebrate the release of Writhe, my 15th novel, you will find below a spicy smorgasbord of sizzle. From the official blurb to a reveal of the cover, you may find yourself tantalized to the writhing point… or so an author with spirited delusions of grandeur can hope. *grins*

At the end, you will also find an excerpt from the novel. In fact, you will find the entire published Prologue to Writhe.

I guarantee the Prologue will not be what you expect.

At the very, very end, you will find a list of, what I hope will be, helpful links.

Please enjoy and spread the word!

Until tomorrow…

ChloeWrithe

Writhe by Chloe Stowe
(Book One of “The Lion and the Steed” Series)

Trauma surgeon. Widower… 28 year old Samuel Lyon defined his life by these words alone. Five years had passed since the car accident that had stolen his wife and only child. Five years in which Sam simply survived but no longer lived.

Black market art. International rings of thieves... Brevyn Steed’s world pulsed and thrummed with these. Chasing down stolen masterpieces around the globe defined this 28 year old’s very existence. He wanted for nothing more.

But when the case of a stolen 19th century painting sets these two opposing men’s lives on the same course, Sam and Brevyn collide in a heart-stopping mystery in which their hearts slowly weave together and blazingly writhe.

A romantic thriller from the author who brought you Forever Bound, Taken and the “Hellesgate” Series, Writhe is the story of an extraordinary love born of Fate and forged in passion.


Prologue to Writhe

On a bright winter’s day in 1787, Caspar, a boy of just thirteen, stood at the edge of a frozen lake and cried.
The wails of his aunt and the frantic screams of his father, the young man ignored. Caspar’s world had narrowed down to one finite point—

Johann.

Younger by two years, Johann always trailed behind his older brother like a puppy. Caspar didn’t mind. He enjoyed the little boy’s company; in fact, Caspar pandered to it—

But now, Johann was dead.

The ice had broken.

The boy had fallen in.

Stunned for a fatal instant, the eleven-year-old child had drifted away below the ice.

No one could reach him.

Now, an hour later, the sun beat down on the little body, trying in vain to warm the pale, pale skin.

Caspar watched, tears burning down his cheeks, tightly fisted hands trembling at his side.

“My fault … my fault …” he muttered under his breath. A thousand times he hiccupped those words that day, but no one heard him. So lost in their own agony, no one paid Caspar any mind.

By the time night fell, the young man had gone silent. When he spoke again, three days later, Johann was not mentioned.

In fact, Caspar never spoke of Johann and that terribly bright winter’s day again, until fifty years later—

Caspar stood in front of an artist’s easel and spoke of the tragedy not in words, but in paint. The truth of those fateful minutes when young Johann fell beneath ice, Caspar laid out across the canvas as his confession.

Furiously he worked, finishing the piece in less than a single day.

Standing back, satisfied though terribly sick at heart, Caspar David Friedrich, a painter now of international fame and regard, raised his brush to sign his name—and collapsed from a stroke.

Friedrich would survive, but his once-heralded career was over.

The subject of Johann, in neither word nor paint, would ever be brought up by Caspar again.

The painting, Caspar’s lone confession, disappeared. When the artist returned home from his long convalescence, the piece he had simply entitled “Johann” was nowhere to be found. Only the rumor of the painting’s existence remained.

As the decades passed, the rumor itself was even lost to all but a few.

In carefully worded whispers, the gossip of a missing masterpiece was kept alive by eager, often unscrupulous, collectors. These people, in their tight circles of high art, made it perfectly clear they were willing to pay any price and go to any length to own the lost confession of Caspar David Friedrich—

A painting known simply as “Johann.”


Links…
To purchase Writhe from the Ravenous Romance publishing house… http://www.ravenousromance.com/modern...
You can also find Writhe at these major markets…
All Romance Ebooks:
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/prod...
Amazon (it should be up sometime today):
http://www.amazon.com
Barnes & Noble (hopefully today):
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/chloe...