Maggie Bloom's Blog, page 2

So I wrote a tragicomic teen romance/adventure/mystery with a paranormal twist! Now what?

I’m happy to report that I have wrapped up editing on my new YA novel, Love Over Matter, and pressed the publish button! The book is currently FREE at Smashwords in multiple e-book formats! The paperback will follow in a few months, when my cover artist is finished with the design work.

Here’s the blurb for the book, for those who may wish to download:

George is dead. Now Cassie must learn to live without him.

Sixteen-year-old Cassie McCoy would do anything to contact George—her best friend and secret crush—beyond the grave, including dabbling in dark magic. But her “powers” are stuck in neutral. Everyone is on her case to move on with her life. And there’s a lot she never knew about George—or so says a mysterious, familiar-looking stranger who may not only be the key to George’s hidden past but, if the storm clouds align just right, the means of delivering Cassie’s bittersweet goodbye.

And the e-book cover …

As always, I hope you enjoy reading! Reviews are also welcome.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Time Has Come…

…for another installment of my work-in-progress.

Before we blast off, though, I hereby beg the writing gods to pick up the pace on this manuscript. I mean, I’m not Methuselah here. Time’s a-tickin’.

That said, I hope you enjoy.

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

chapter 4 (First Draft)

Opal Madden lives in a converted church (formerly Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian) with her golf-pro stepfather and fragile (often intoxicated) mother, a washed-up soap opera actress.

“You’re lucky it’s Monday,” I tell Haley as we coast to a stop in Mom’s Prius, my lack of a driver’s license endowing me with a paranoid eye-twitch, “and the restaurant’s closed.” I pop the shifter into park. “If we get caught,” I add, channeling a last-minute surge of adrenaline, “your head’s on the chopping block, not mine.”

Haley wiggles a hand under her cape (on top of everything else, she’s in Dracula mode) and withdraws a small bottle of clear liquid. I don’t recognize it until she spins it around, revealing the half-peeled bourbon label. “Here you go,” she says, tossing the holy water into my lap. “I thought this might help.”

I power the car down. “How did you…?”

She smirks. “I have powers too, you know.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Remember when you used that stuff on Dad?” she asks with a twirl of her dye-damaged split ends. “And he thought the coffee maker was on the fritz?”

I fight a smile. “That was pretty funny,” I say. “But it got him in for a physical, didn’t it? And once his lab work came back, Mom stopped moping around about the possibility of him dying. So it was a win-win.”

“That’s true,” Haley allows, her gaze locked on the inconspicuous front door of Madden’s House of Worship.

I sense something moving inside and –sure enough—Opal’s svelte, pale face appears, framed in a stained glass-bordered window as if she’s a religious icon or one of the living portraits from Harry Potter.

“Action!” I spout, a performance on the horizon (at least on the part of Opal’s mother).

Haley unbuckles, and I stifle a laugh; my sister is a knot of contradictions: head-banger music and death gear, safety belts and white-light altruism.

We traipse up to the church’s entrance, Opal’s knobby arm—followed by her slim-to-nonexistent profile—slipping out to greet us. “Sorry,” she begins, her eyes sandpapered- and puffy-looking, “but I didn’t know who else to call.” She gives a faint snort-sniffle.

“Where is she?” I inquire, as if I’m an old-timey doctor making a house call, which I sort of am.

“The bathtub,” she says with a resigned shake of her head.

“Anyone else home?”

“Nope.”

“What’re you gonna do?” wonders Haley.

“Fix her,” I say, surprised by the certainty in my voice.

Opal kicks the base of the door to nudge it open. “Come on in.”

The interior of the Madden house is the demented love child of a souvenir shop, a disco, and a bag of cotton candy (think psychedelic pastel colors, swarms of fringe and beads, and herds of ceramic elephants, poised to stampede).

I step over a pile of tattered People magazines and trail Opal and Haley into the bathroom, a voluminous space with two stalls (left over from the Saint Andrew’s days) and, behind a translucent screen, a Jacuzzi tub. “Mom?” Opal says softly as we approach. “You up?”

A garbled string of nonsense fills the air, the best translation of which, by my ear, is: What do you want? Just go away.

“I brought someone to see you,” coos Opal. She gives Haley and me the stop sign with her palm, then slinks behind the screen.

More gurgled syllables: Get out of here. I hate you.

I clear my throat. “Mrs. Madden? It’s me, Cassandra McCoy. Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

Opal’s mother and I (and George, too) worked on an Easter production of Alice in Wonderland at the Milford Community Theater three years ago. George did set design and construction; I was in the wardrobe department; Mrs. Madden played the Queen of Hearts (I even sewed the skirt for one of her costumes!) “Stupid people, always botherin’ me,” her slurred voice snipes.

Geez, and I thought she’d taken a shine to me.

“Mom,” whines Opal, her voice veering into panicked territory, “you don’t feel good. Cassie’s going to help you.”

I elbow Haley and mouth: Is she naked?

My sister shrugs, wrinkles her face in disgust: I don’t know.

I clutch her shoulders and deliver an encouraging little shove. “Check for me.”

She skids to a stop, shoots me a glare and whispers, “Jerk.”

“Just do it,” I reply, even softer. I flick my wrist to shoo her off.

She shakes her head and sighs, twists around the edge of the screen with her eyelids pinched to slits. Her torso freezes, as if she’s stopped breathing.

“So…?” I murmur.

“Ick.”

“Is it that bad?” I ask, tiptoeing up behind her.

“See for yourself.” She whips backwards and heads for one of the stalls. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

I don’t really have much of a choice. As my head rounds the screen, a noxious whiff of…decay overwhelms me. “What’s that smell?” I can’t help muttering, even though the question is ultra-rude.

Before anyone answers, I glimpse the source of the stench for myself: three days’ worth (give or take) of rotten, half-eaten snack foods—melted cookie-dough ice cream, oozing out of a bloated container; a bouquet of disposable cups, each holding an inch of spoiled milk and the remains of a nibbled peanut butter cup or peppermint patty; a brick of Swiss cheese, hacked off at weird angles and balanced—exposed—on the edge of the tub, gobs of dried body wash (or shampoo) acting as support beams.

Inside the tub—which is dry, thank God—Mrs. Madden is scrunched in a ball, her mouth gaping and a muffled snore pulsing through her airways.

Opal recognizes the disgust on my face and, once again, says, “Sorry.”

I pat her arm and smile. “Don’t worry about it. The Moondancer looks like this every night.” (Not really, but it does get pretty messy sometimes. And if it makes Opal feel better…)

“Wake up,” Opals says, poking delicately at her mother’s shoulder.

Mrs. Madden’s lips clamp together and she bolts upright, a dazed look clouding her eyes. “Erm..ur…grrm…”

In the distance, a sloppy spitting sound is followed by the whooshing flush of a toilet. I chance two small steps toward the Jacuzzi, where I hover a few feet over Mrs. Madden’s head and observe her aura, which is a striking combination of black and gold—and the black is winning, a fact that doesn’t surprise me given the state of this bathroom (not to mention Mrs. Madden’s hair, which is snarled into such a bleached-blond nest that a family of sparrows could take up permanent residence). “Hey there,” I say in a smooth, breathy voice.

She hangs both arms sloppily over the side of the tub. “What do you want?”

“Mom!” squeals Opal. “Cut it out!”

My vision is dazzled by a machine-gun spray of gold in Mrs. Madden’s darkening aura. I blink away ghostly spots from behind my eyelids and fix my gaze on her papery-looking fingers, which are cracked and red, raw to the point of bleeding. “I heard you were sad,” I say, the statement a lie only in the strictest sense, “and that you needed someone to talk to.”

“He left me!” she declares in her on-camera Hollywood voice. “And he ain’t never comin’ back!”

Opal gives a dismissive shake of her head. “It’s a fight, that’s all. Happens once a week.”

I argued with George too, I think. The brother-sister kind of needling. What I wouldn’t give to have a real grown-up fight with him right now.

“Would you guys mind, uh, leaving us alone?” I ask Haley (who’s a little shaky post-retch) and Opal.

Mrs. Madden grimaces. “I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do. I made your costumes for Alice in Wonderland.”

From the corner of my eye, I notice Haley grabbing Opal’s forearm and tugging her out the door. Under her breath, my sister mutters, “Luck o’ the Irish to ya.”

I squat beside the tub, my feet sinking into a mound of damp, musty towels. For maybe a whole minute, I don’t say a word. Instead, I study the worry lines—deep, sorry furrows—that crack Mrs. Madden’s face like faults through an earthquake zone. “How long have you been in here?” I ask eventually, my gaze stuck on the flowy arms of her sheer housedress, which resembles a cross between a genie’s costume and an angel’s robe.

She shifts to a kneeling position and drops back against the tub surround, a tendril of stray hair matted to her lipstick-caked mouth. “What time is it?” she asks with a squint.

I search the walls for a clock but come up empty. “Three-thirty?”

“Saturday?”

“Uh-uh.” I give a nonchalant shrug. “Monday.”

“Oh.” She peels the hair away from her mouth. “So what do I have to do to get rid of you?”

I flash my cheerleader smile (though, sadly, I’ve never shaken a pom-pom in my life). “Come out of there,” I say, extending a hand to help her over the side of the tub.

Clumsily, she latches on to me, her bony fingertips (thank God her nails are stubby and ragged, or I’d be donating blood) poking into my bicep. “Good,” I say, once she’s steadied on her feet beside me.

She loosens her grip on my arm but doesn’t let go. “You’re Cassandra McCoy,” she says, studying me with violet eyes that have suddenly gone clear.

I baby-step to the scalloped mother-of-pearl sink. “The one and only.”

An encore of the cheerleader grin.

“He feels bad about it, you know,” she tells me, a mystic, far-off tone to her otherwise scratchy voice.

I locate a plastic cup that’s as close to clean as we’re going to get, rinse it under the tap and fill it with cool water. “Where did he go?” I ask, trying to take an interest in Mr. Madden’s Houdini act.

“The astral plane.”

“Huh?” I hold the cup out, to suggest she should take a drink, but she stares right through it.

“Limbo,” she says. “The space between.”

Why am I here again? Oh, yeah. “Okay…uh, do you have a phone number? Maybe I can call him and…?”

She releases my arm, takes the cup and sets it back on the sink, amongst the spent toilet paper rolls, crumpled tissues and tipped-over bottles of makeup. Below a whisper, she intones, “Guilt is toxic.”

I finger the bourbon bottle in my pocket, work out how I’m going to get the holy water into that cup—and then into her. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”

She jerks out a wild cackle. “Forgive me?”

“I just mean that…well, everyone makes mistakes. You shouldn’t feel bad. It’ll probably blow over by tomorrow.” I sneak the nip bottle into my palm and carefully uncap it. When she’s not looking: drip, drip, drip—right into the cup.

“There’s no such thing as time in the astral plane.” A dizzy, fuzzy look comes over her.

I give the cup another try. “Aren’t you thirsty?”

She lets me slip the cup into her hand, then takes a long, slow gulp. “Suppose I was.”

I have no proof of this, but holy water seems to mellow people out, smooth their rough edges (at least that’s what it did for my dad). “Drink it all,” I prod. “In case you’re dehydrated.”

“He loves you,” she tells me, as the cup swings back toward her garishly outlined lips.

“Mr. Madden?”

“Of course not.” She shakes her head, he gaze floating toward the ceiling. “It’s the boy,” she mumbles. “George.”

“You’re gonna have to drive,” I tell Haley as we hustle to the Prius after an unsettling tea party with Opal and her mother. I toss the keys in my sister’s direction, but she lets them drop into the street, where they clatter across a manhole cover and skid under the car.

She looks at me like I’ve suggested sacrificing a goat. “Are you crazy?”

I hold my arms out, zombie-style. “You trust me?” I ask, watching my chipped blue fingernails tremble.

She crouches for the keys, fishes them out and gives them a doubtful stare-down. “Why don’t we just call Dad?”

It’s not a bad idea, since our father is the understanding—and forgiving—type. If Mom finds out we’ve kidnapped her baby (I swear sometimes that she loves this eco-friendly cruiser more than she does us) we’ll be headed for the guillotine. I check my cell phone for the time. “I doubt they’re back,” I say, referencing our parents’ weekly jaunt to Boston to nab supplies for the restaurant.

“Well, I’m not getting behind the wheel,” declares Haley, “and you can’t make me.”

Did she really just say that, or was it an echo from 2002? I wrench the keys from her hand. “Fine. If you’re going to be so…immature.”

Neither of us bothers speaking until the Prius hums into our garage at home, the ride an empty blur (which proves I had no business warming the driver’s seat in the first place). “Does this look right?” I ask as we exit the car, a wave of panic washing over me.

Haley studies the way I’ve parked, checks the concrete for chalk marks we’ve left behind as a guide. “You’re off by six inches,” she tells me flatly.

“Should I fix it?” I spin back toward the car. “I should fix it.”

“Lighten up,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “You’ll never get it perfect.” She snatches a whisk broom from a utility bench, where our father has stashed a jug of motor oil in hopes of becoming a do-it-yourself mechanic. “There,” she says, brushing away the first mark. “Good as new.” She taps me on the shoulder with the broom.

“She knew about George,” I mutter as I whisk the next chalk line out of existence. “Weird things. Personal things. Things she had no way of…”

“Is that why you’re acting so freaky?”

I guess she assumed I was rattled from the intervention, which went off swimmingly, all things considered. “Why won’t he talk to me?” I ask, not expecting an answer. “I was…” I finish the cover-up and return the broom to its slot. “We were…”

“You should have told him.”

A dagger to my heart. “Now you’re a relationship guru? How many boyfriends have you had?”

She grins. “Maybe I don’t like boys. Maybe I have a different preference.”

“Touché.” I give her a snappy nod. “Do you? Like boys, I mean?”

“They’re all right. Some of ‘em, anyway.”

“There’s none like George,” I say. “Not that I’ve seen.”

Haley shakes her head, a look of pity coloring her face. “Don’t you think it’s time,” she says gently, “to let it go?”

I am so sick of this conversation. For two years, I’ve heard nothing but: It’s not your fault, Cassie. George wouldn’t blame you. Remember the good times. Celebrate his life by living yours.

Ad nauseam.

It’s not like I don’t want to move on; I do. But I can’t. Not without George. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say. “Message received. Again.” I duck into the Prius for my English books (we’re simultaneously reading 1984 and Brave New World—sort of a compare and contrast assignment), which have been absorbing space in the backseat all weekend. As I wiggle the Orwell text—which has somehow become lodged in the seat crevice—to liberation, a startling sight catches my eye. “Haley, come here!” I shout, my voice shrill with alarm as it rebounds off my eardrums. She’s not moving fast enough. “Haley! Help!”

I sense her behind me. “What?”

All I can do is point.

“Oh…my…God,” she drawls, three measly syllables stretching the length of the alphabet song. She pushes in front of me and stares at the seat cushion, where, tied into a compact little knot, lies an empty Funyuns bag. “Omigod, omigod, omigod,” she spouts, shifting to staccato rhythm.

I poke absently at her spine. “When did Mom get this car?”

She shrugs.

“Think!” I demand. She goes for the chip bag, which, to any normal person, would look like trash. But we know better. “Don’t,” I warn. “Don’t touch it.” Disturbing this relic would be akin to defacing George’s grave.

Haley shimmies back out of the car, her face ashen. “It can’t be…” she says warily. “Can it?”

“When did Mom get this car?” I repeat, doing some mental math—although it’s all but impossible that the Funyuns bag has been kicking around the Prius since before George died.

Haley nibbles her lip. “July, I think. Or Maybe August.” She stares me dead in the eyes. “But it was definitely after seventh grade. I remember, because Mom and Dad had the station wagon when they took us to Six Flags.”

My sister is right, which leaves only one explanation: the hungry ghost of George Alfred Brooks has been noshing on delicious onion-flavored snacks, twisting the empty wrappers into his trademark bowtie knots (when he was alive, he claimed the packaging took up less space in landfills this way), and planting the evidence for me to find.

I want to say something, but my jaw just drops and hangs there, slack and dopey-looking.

“What’re you gonna do?” asks Haley.

There is no protocol for how to act when the dead best friend you secretly loved suddenly resurfaces—or at least his garbage does. “I don’t know.”

A Spot o’ Good News

Well, Blog, don’t get nervous, but I’m posting to you TWO DAYS IN A ROW! (But only due to extraordinary circumstances.)

The results of the first round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest are in, and guess what? My alter ego (Greta Nelsen, but you knew that ) must have been sprinkled with fairy dust, because her novel, SHATTER MY ROCK, has advanced!

Oh, happy day!

Congrats to my fellow competitors who also made the cut! (And sympathies to those who didn’t. My psyche is still bruised from last year’s rejection.)

Love to all writers! You rock!

Now back to regularly scheduled programming…

Rules of the Road

Okay, Blog…

So I’ve been thinking (I know, gasp!) about this whole “writing career” thing, and I’ve come up with some rules (for me) to write by. They are sort of wonky and of questionable value to anyone beyond my doorstep. Nevertheless, I am compelled to scratch them into the collective psyche.

Here goes:

1. THE MUSES DICTATE; I JUST TRANSCRIBE.

This idea may sound ludicrous to non-writers (I get the funniest looks when I explain that a certain vulgar phrase cannot be deleted, because the way it’s written is the way the narrator expressed it to me), but I consider myself more of a medium than an author: stories come THROUGH me, not FROM me. This is as it should be, and I have no intention of strong-arming my imaginary friends into speaking/acting/thinking as I’d like them to. They are who they are, and I accept them unconditionally.

2. THE CHARACTERS SPEAK; IT’S MY JOB TO LISTEN.

See #1. Characters have free rein. They can (and should) be funny, annoying, heartwarming, outrageous, diabolical, full of themselves, shy, sassy, immoral, stuck-up, lovable, and, most importantly, REAL.

3. REALITY IS NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT.

I hereby vow to never create a prettied-up, rose-colored (per)version of reality. Life is messy and I intend to tell the truth about it even–scratch that, especially–concerning the hard (and sometimes offensive) stuff.

4. HONOR THY READER.

There’s not much point in writing if the reader is not PRIORITY #1. Duh. (This translates into young adult novels that, I hope, teens will enjoy. Parents may differ.)

5. APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE.

My muses are naughty, I admit. I have little or no control over them. If I could invite only chaste, respectful, nicey-nice characters to populate my imagination, maybe I would (though I doubt it, because I would be BORED. TO. TEARS).

To those who find my muses childish, frustrating, obscene, etc. (?), I can only say: thank you for your opinions. You are entitled to them, and I respect that.

Pleas re-read #1 through #3.

As you can see, my hands are tied.

*** END OF CRAZY-WRITER RANT ***

Your reward for suffering through my psychoses? A new installment of my work-in-progress: Cassandra McCoy, Voodoo Princess Extraordinaire. I hope it makes you smile.

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

chapter 3 (FIRST DRAFT)

I didn’t expect Mr. Smith to look so frail, so when Ian wheeled him to the head of the guest-of-honor table, I did a double-take.

“That’s him?” I ask Haley, elbowing her in the ribs as we slosh plastic pitchers full of ice water at the prep sink.

“Yep,” she replies without looking up.

“Didn’t he used to be…taller?”

“He’s in a wheelchair. What’d you expect? You said yourself that he was gonna die soon.”

I hoist a number of pitchers onto a serving tray and steel my shaky grip to avoid taking an unintended bath. “I said he could die,” I clarify. “He might die. I’m not in the business of predicting tragedy.”

Haley opens her mouth to say something, but before she gets it out, our mother floats in between us and starts lathering her hands with antibacterial soap. “You girls doin’ okay?” she asks. “Everything under control?”

It’s weird to see Mom at the restaurant, since she usually works behind-the-scenes at home, keeping the books, cutting the checks, paying the bills, and engaging in screaming phone fights with vendors over late deliveries and spoiled product. “Should I put the donation box out now?” I ask. “It’s getting busy.”

The cover charge for this shindig is ten bucks a head, every cent of which goes directly into Mr. Smith’s pocket. Beyond that, guests are encouraged to give what they can to help ease his physical and financial pain. From the looks of the yellow-green raccoon mask around his eyes and the grayish tint of his lips and fingertips, though, it’s going to take quite a wad of cash to put Ian’s dad back in ship-shape.

Mom offers to set up the donation box—or basket, as it were—in a special spot by the entrance that is decorated with a spray of red and white streamers left over from Milford High’s victory in the state football championships, leaving Haley and me on waitress duty.

As Haley weaves through the dining room with her tray of water, Ian catches my eye with a nonchalant wave. I unload three of my four pitchers en route to his side. “So…?” I say, feeling a self-satisfied rush as I top off Mr. Smith’s glass. “What do you think?”

Ian appraises the crowd and nods. “Sweet,” he says. “You really came through.”

I take a goofy bow, the serving tray tucked behind me like a tail-feather. “My pleasure.”  I stare at Ian’s dad—who looks even worse up close—for a long moment, then turn my head and whisper, “Is he—uh—up to this?” I mean, it’s not like the man has to dance a jig, but for his sake, it would be best if he could remain upright.

“I tried to talk him out of coming,” Ian tells me with a shrug, “but he insisted. He said it wouldn’t be proper to have a benefit without him making an appearance.”

“You guys want some more bread?” I ask, noticing that the wicker plate one of the real waitresses has brought is now empty.

An elderly woman seated across from Mr. Smith pipes up. “Would you, dear?”

“Sure thing.” I give Ian a happy pat on the shoulder, snatch the plate and flit back to the kitchen.

As I enter, Mom presses a bouquet of wildflowers at me. “Here,” she says. “I forgot about these. Drop ‘em at the Smiths’ table for me?”

I got my platinum hair and ghostly blue-grey eyes from my mother, a fact that, had she lost the heart attack battle, would’ve haunted me in the mirror. “Yeah,” I say, pushing the vase back, “just gimme a sec.” I twirl around and deposit the tray on the counter, refill the bread plate and then collect the flowers with a smile.

With a bump of my knee, I swing the kitchen door open. This is awesome, I think, surveying the crowd. Ian’s dad will be okay now; Ian will be able to relax.

Then the chaos starts.

“Quick! Help!” a chorus of voices shouts. There’s a rush of movement through the dining room, in the direction of the Smiths’ table. “Call an ambulance!”

I slide the vase onto a vacant chair, bob my head around to catch a glimpse of the commotion. But I can’t make out what’s happening.

Until…

A husky gentleman in a brown tweed suit steps out of my line of sight, revealing Mr. Smith, slumped forward in his wheelchair, his milky eyes tacked open as he tries—but fails—to draw a breath. Oh, God, I think. Don’t let it be his heart. Mom was lucky. Most people don’t survive.

“He’s choking!” a muffled voice proclaims.

I make momentary eye contact with Ian, who looks crushed with panic. “Not on my watch,” I murmur. Even though my powers are limited (and, in most cases, spotty in their reliability), they do exist. The proof? Something told me to bring the voodoo doll—which is currently tucked in my apron pocket, behind my ticket pad—with me today.

But I’m running out of time.

As a trio of helpful guests, including a buff, twenty-something-year-old guy who may very well be a paramedic, struggles to deliver the Heimlich maneuver to a wheelchair-bound liver patient already on death’s door, I drop to the floor, abandon the bread plate in a sea of sensible shoes and clutch around the ticket pad until I get a pinch of my fuzzy little friend (not to mention a bunch of dastardly paper cuts).

I pull the doll out and give it a once-over, flashes of my marathon knitting session racing through my mind. When I made this thing, I was hoping to raise George from the dead just long enough to bare my soul (because a zombie boyfriend is not exactly on my bucket list). Now I’m praying that it might stop Mr. Smith from bumping up against George in the great beyond.

I’ve only successfully employed this tchotchke once, and that was to rouse Haley from a Robitussin coma (okay, so maybe she was just extra tired) when she had the flu. And I’ve never tried it on a virtual stranger.

But…

I lock my gaze on Mr. Smith’s head—or slightly above it, to be precise—at the spot where, if he were an angel, his halo would hover. This is where I get the best read of a person’s aura, a.k.a. the wiggly field of energy surrounding all living things.

Mr. Smith’s aura is even sicker than his complexion lets on: a pool of dusky grey, flecked with bursts of twinkling, snow-white light—the sign of imminent death.

The buff guest hoists Mr. Smith from his wheelchair with an overgrown meat-hook of an arm; meanwhile, I begin pinching the doll’s midsection betwixt my thumb and forefinger, making it perform fast-motion sit-ups. Come on, come on, come on, I plead. Cough it up.

“They’re on the way!” someone squeals, referring to the emergency personnel.

Ian paces by the doorway, his palm clamped over his temple, his eyes searching the lot for the ambulance.

The lump in the center of my forehead, which has been sinking toward my skull since the day after our treasure hunt, suddenly starts stinging. I ignore the pain—and the unsettling burning—and keep pumping away at the voodoo doll’s stomach.

Twenty feet off, the maybe-paramedic grasps Mr. Smith from behind, plants a serious fist in his abdomen and thrusts.

I pump.

He thrusts.

I pump.

He thrusts.

My head stings.

And burns.

I pump.

He thrusts.

I pump.

He thrusts.

Then…

Pop!

The doll’s midsection goes soft, and Mr. Smith chokes a ragged breath. By the door, Ian’s posture turns rubbery.

“What’re you doing?” Haley demands from my side.

I slip the doll into my apron and struggle to my feet. “Huh?”

“I saw you, you know.”

“Yeah? So.”

She throws an arm around my shoulder. “You think it worked?”

“He’s breathing, isn’t he?”

Mom blows by us and rushes the entrance, props the door open for the paramedics, who are just wheeling up out front, ambulance lights blazing and sirens whining. The frantic twittering of voices, which had blurred into a stream of white noise during my “intervention,” seems to escalate. A wave of exhaustion washes over me, and I drop cockeyed into a chair.

Haley flops down beside me, a ghost of a smile on her blackened lips. “It’s kind of ironic, huh?” she says, jerking her head toward Mr. Smith.

I think she means his almost dying at a benefit to save his life. “I guess.”

A female paramedic storms into the restaurant, a walkie-talkie barking from her hip. In her wake scurry her trim, bearded partner and Mom, literally wringing her hands. “That’s right,” Mom chirps, directing the trek from the rear. “He’s over there.” She wags her arm through the air. “Just past my…my banana tree.”

Of course, my mother would mention that fake, dusty monstrosity. I roll my eyes and tap Haley on the knee. “We’d better go help.”

Her eyebrows pinch together. “What for?”

Maybe she’s right: The paramedics seem to have things under control. Then again, Ian looks like he could use a shoulder to lean on. “I’m gonna go…” I say. Haley shoos me off, her mouth twisted into a smirk. I don’t like him, I want to tell her. Not that way. Instead, I say, “Why don’t you check on the guests? Try to calm them down?” I rise and start heading for the guest-of-honor, but then I catch Dad summoning me to the kitchen with a nervous head-bob.

I abruptly change course, nearly spinning out as I shift sideways around Mom’s silk ficus. “What’s up?” I say when I get within my father’s orbit.

“Is he okay?” he asks about Mr. Smith, his nose twitching and eyes darting.

My heart clenches like it did when Mom got sweaty and collapsed on the lawn. “Sure,” I say with a nod. “Disaster averted.” I give him a reassuring grin.

He puffs out a tense breath. “Thank God.”

I met George Brooks by a puddle behind the rear wheel of a box truck, the day his family moved into Willow Crest, the up-and-coming neighborhood to which my parents had—two years earlier—scrimped and saved enough money to relocate Haley and me.

“What’re you doin’?” I asked him through the gap in my six-year-old teeth, the bottom two of which had just fallen out.

He pushed a stone around the puddle with a twig, paused to fix his ponderous brown eyes on me. “None of your beeswax.”

I rose a few inches from my crouched position and glanced over my shoulder, my mother’s watchful form still in sight. “Can I try?”

A doubtful tsking sound burst from his lips. “You don’t know how.”

I rocked on my heels, folded my arms over my knees. “I do so.”

The freckles seemed to rearrange on his face. “You can’t,” he told me flatly. “I made it up.”

We went silent for a while, the way old married folks sometimes do. “I’m good at stories,” I said eventually, his game of stone maneuvering—which was starting to resemble a strategic military exercise (though I couldn’t have voiced such a thing at the time)—entrancing me.

“Oh, yeah?” he replied, sounding intrigued but skeptical.

I shot him my know-it-all nod. “Uh-huh.”

“How old are you?”

My first lie: “Seven.”

He grimaced. “Nuh-uh. You’re too small.”  He gave me an appraising once-over. “I bet you’re five, at the most.”

“Well, you only look four,” I said (my second lie), my face flushing and my eyes starting to sting.

“Don’t cry,” he told me, the confrontational tone disappearing from his voice. He tapped my shin with the twig, then held it up as a peace offering. As I accepted, he said, “I’m George, by the way. And I’m eight, not four.”

I twigged three stones to the edge of the puddle, where I strung them together like pearls. “I’m Cassandra,” I informed him. “But people call me Cassie. Or Cass, for short. I have a baby sister, Haley.” I waited for him to dish the dirt on his siblings, but he just fell back onto his palms like a crab and started kicking at the truck’s enormous tire. “You got a sister? Or a brother?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m adopted.”

I probably wouldn’t have known what adopted meant, except that six months earlier, my parents had deposited Haley with a babysitter and trucked me to a matinee showing of Annie at the discount movie theater. For weeks afterward, I was convinced (and terrified) that Mom and Dad would die, leaving me to scrub floors and starch sheets at the knee of the devious Miss Hannigan. “Since when?” I asked, thinking of Annie, who was older than George when she found her “daddy.”

“Same as you,” he said with a shrug. “Since I was born.”

I wanted to tell George it was okay that he was adopted; it didn’t matter to me. In fact, it was more than okay. It was neat and cool, and it gave him something in common with a movie star. But I couldn’t put this into words, so instead I asked, “Wanna play jump rope?”

He crinkled his brow, then shrugged. “Jump rope?”

“Yeah,” I said with a shy smile. “You can be the swinger, and I’ll jump.”

“Got a rope?”

A wild squawk from Clive jolts me back to the task at hand: cleaning his cage—a job made harder by the fact that I’ve pimped his nest. “Oh, behave!” I chastise, as my bird-friend hops and pecks around the carpet (and occasionally dips under my bed). I withdraw the last branch of his forest, run a feather duster (ironic, I know) over it and set it aside. Most people probably wouldn’t devote so much attention to a rescue-crow, but I can’t help feeling obligated to make Clive’s life as comfortable and pleasant as possible, especially after what happened to Clive-ina (that’s what I call Clive’s poor, deceased mate—God bless her feathered soul).

It takes me another ten minutes to pry the wood chip-covered newspaper from the bottom of the cage, Windex the bare plastic to a scratchy sheen, and re-line the thing with comics (I like to think that one day Clive will learn how to read and appreciate my sense of humor).

I’m in the midst of sprinkling cedar over Snoopy’s profile when bang! bang! bang! goes my door, heralding Haley’s arrival. (I’m not sure why she bothers knocking—or pounding, as it were—since she’s prone to barging in uninvited.)

I shoo Clive into his barren hovel and latch the door behind him. “What?” I say to Haley, agitation rising in my voice as she whips up beside me. I stare past her at the gaping door, unable to stop myself from sighing.

“What’re you doing?” she demands, matching my irritation. She taps her foot and nibbles at her pinkie, her fingernail squeaking as she gnashes it between her teeth.

I freeze her with a serious glare. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

My sister would do well to lose the Elvira hairdo, G.I. Joe footwear, and Marilyn Manson wardrobe (because, honestly, she’s a walking cliché). “Huh?” she says blankly.

“What do you want?” I grouse, my head involuntarily cocking.

She drops onto my bed, bunches my pillow into a ball and tucks it under her chin. “Opal, uh…” she says, trailing off for a few beats, “…she, um, needs you to…”

I roll my eyes. “When?” I ask, knowing what my sister’s friend wants: a supernatural favor.

“Five minutes ago?” she says with a sheepish grin.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah!

Well, hello Blog! Long time, no write. I’ve missed you.

Thought I’d drop by to say that (praise the Lord!) I have a working title for my new Young Adult novel.

What is it, you ask?

It’s kind of long, I admit. And it might not make much sense. Plus, I’ll probably end up changing it. But since you just can’t go on without knowing…here it is:

Cassandra McCoy, Voodoo Princess Extraordinaire

When you read the novel, it (the title and the book) will be funny, I swear.

Anyhoo, Blog, the reason I haven’t written you in a while is that this new novel is giving me a bit o’ trouble. Getting it out of my head has been like trying to squeeze the last dab of toothpaste from the tube. But I think I have finally stumbled onto a squeegee–metaphorically speaking–in the form of a plot twist that will hopefully have me banging away at the keyboard into the wee hours. If you’d like to read about voodoo backfires, sneaky cleaning ladies, Russian spies and secret twins, I’m your girl.

In the meantime, here’s another chapter of the aforementioned manuscript. It’s rough and bloody (in form, not content), so you might want to put on some gloves. As always, this is an unedited first draft. Don’t get too attached to anything, lest your darlings perish on the editing room floor. Otherwise, enjoy!

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

chapter 2

We didn’t find the coins, even though Crazy Shotgun Guy (he never did tell us his name) spent forty minutes working up a sweat with a bona fide shovel, leaving a hopscotch of disturbed earth in his wake.

“Sorry,” I tell Ian as we part ways in the still-dark street, half a block from my (and Haley’s) house. “Maybe we can think of something else.” I scrunch my face into a contemplative scowl. “A bake sale? Or a car wash? Oh, oh!” I spout, the perfect idea hitting me. “We could do a charity dinner. Remember that one we had last year for the Angelos, when their house burned down?”

By “we” I mean my parents, mostly, since they’re the proud owners and nearly live-in operators of The Moondancer, Milford’s top American eatery, pre-prom destination, and all-around good-time hangout.

Haley starts scuffing down the sidewalk, her legs wobbly and Clive’s cage bumping along the sloped lawn beside her.

Ian gives me a hopeless shrug. “I dunno,” he says. “It’s up to you.”

I lean in and deliver a little shoulder squeeze. “Done,” I say. “How about next Sunday?” I notice Haley hobbling into the end of our driveway and holler, “Wait up!”

She shimmies to a stop and sets Clive in the grass.

“Thanks, Cass,” Ian whispers, his voice threatening to crack. “You’re the best.”

I roll my eyes, brush my fingers over his hand and start jogging for Haley. Behind me in the street, the Love Machine turns over with a whine, rumbles to life and vanishes in the night.

By the time I clomp up beside my sister, I wish I could disappear too. Because no sooner do I dip a toe in our driveway than a light pops on inside our house. The kitchen light, to be exact—signifying our father’s bleary-eyed trek to the coffee machine. We’re five minutes too late, I think. Five lousy minutes. And now we’re going to be caught.

“I’ve got an idea,” I tell Haley, whose eyes are so sleep-deprived they’re puffed to near slits.

She simply groans.

I lock my arm around hers, snatch Clive’s cage and hustle us toward the garage, which we slink into through its back door.

“What’re you doing?” mumbles Haley, her head bobbing as I tug at the zipper of her hoodie.

She swats at my arm.

“Cut it out,” I say. I twirl her sideways and pull the hoodie off. “We’ve gotta look right when we go in there. You don’t want to be grounded ‘til graduation, do you?”

She doesn’t bother answering.

I usher her over to a concrete sink, where our father has been known to filet a deer or suds the downspouts of our numerous gutters. The knob grinds (I can feel something catching inside) as I open the faucet.

“Here,” I say, flicking a few droplets of water at Haley’s hairline. “You need to be sweaty.” Due to my sister’s ebony dye-job, though, my efforts are largely ineffectual.

I drip a stream of water from my forehead to my ear, then repeat the process on the other side. Meanwhile, Haley starts rocking on her heels as if she’s about to tip over.

Which leaves me no choice, really.

“Ow!” she screeches as I let loose a two-handed slapfest on her cheeks. I don’t stop for a few more seconds, until I’m sure she’ll pass for a marathoner.

“Okay, do me,” I say, throwing my hands toward my face.

Her eyes crack open a bit wider, and she rubs at her cheeks, which now look perfectly red and blotchy. “Huh?”

“Slap me.”

She squints. “You’re nuts.”

I give her a little huff. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Than…?”

“The track team,” I say. “We’ll tell Dad that we’re practicing to try out.”

“So we got up at…whatever time it is, to go for a run?”

“Yup.” I pull the ruffled curtains back from the garage window and peer at the house, our father’s square form dominating the near corner of the kitchen, giant swaths of newsprint swaying open before him.

“You can barely walk a mile,” argues Haley.

I’m out of patience. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just follow my lead.” I grab her hand and yank, and, begrudgingly, she tails me out of the garage, up the steps, and into our bright, shiny mudroom.

Three more feet and we’ll be in the kitchen (if our father doesn’t hear us and come checking first, that is). I draw a breath, jog a few steps in place and…

Sure enough, Dad makes an appearance, the bulk of his bathrobe—not to mention his new potbelly—eclipsing the doorway. “What…?” is all he says, the sight of us rendering him speechless.

Haley pushes him aside and prances by. “I’m going to bed.”

I try to follow, but Dad lunges into my path. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, trying to put on a tough, bad-cop voice.

I feel a pang of sadness for the peas-in-a-pod relationship my father and I used to have, before the stress of the restaurant, Mom’s illness and Haley’s “dark period.” I form my lips into a pleasant smile. “To sleep?”

Dad smiles back, but it’s more of a gotcha smirk than a happy-to-see-you greeting. “C’mon, Cassandra,” he says, shaking his head. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“But…what do you mean?” I shoot him my famous doe eyes and angle around him for the table. He studies me as I sit down and start flipping through the paper.

“You were at the cemetery, weren’t you?”

I shake my head, suddenly unable to breathe.

He lays a palm on my shoulder, then pats my hair against my back. “It’s okay. We know how hard this is.” He sighs. “But you’ve gotta keep us in the loop. Stop sneaking out in the middle of the night to…do whatever it is you’ve been doing.”

“I don’t sneak out,” I mutter. “We were practicing for the track team.”

He bursts out laughing, which, honestly, strikes me as a tad insulting. “Yeah, okay.”

Swish, swish goes the news in my hands. “We were.”

He takes a seat beside me, and even though I try not to look, I can’t help noticing from the corner of my eye that he is aging at warp-speed, the specks of gray that once dappled his temples now forging an all-out assault on his bushy mane. “It wasn’t your fault, what happened to George.”

I wish he wouldn’t talk to me this way; it’s too raw. I’m too raw.

“He could’ve been texting anyone,” he continues. “It was an accident.”

I bite my lip, shut my eyes against the tears that are welling.

“And he wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

That’s what a therapist told me too: forgive yourself for George; he’d want it that way. But I guess survivor’s guilt exists for a reason, a natural response to loving someone and being helpless to stop from losing them.

If only I hadn’t sent that message…

“He was texting me,” I say. “About…nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

My dad eases off his chair and heads for the stove, where he gets the teakettle percolating. “I don’t want to say ‘Get over it, Cass,’” he tells me gently. “I know it’s not a ‘get over it’ situation. But you do have to figure out how to move on. You’ve been…stuck for a long time.”

Most dads probably wouldn’t be so sensitive, my father included. But while Mom was sick with heart problems five years ago (and recovering from surgery), Dad changed. It was like he tried to absorb Mom—become her, almost—in case the worst happened. Thank God, it didn’t.

“I’m trying,” I say with an exasperated sigh (not at my father, but at my own mental hang-ups). “I am.”

He sets a steaming mug in front of me, the tea bag’s string and little paper tab clinging  like used bubblegum to the side of the cup. “Anything I can do to help?”

I blow on the tea, take a tentative sip. “Maybe.”

His eyes brighten. “Do tell.”

“You know, Ian Smith?” I say.

“Ian Smith?” he repeats, his eyebrows puckering.

I swirl the tea bag around in the water, creating ripples of bitterness. “He’s a senior. One of George’s friends,” I remind him. “A short guy. Kind of looks like Justin Bieber, without the Bieberness. You met him at the funeral; he was one of the pallbearers.”

“What about him?” says my dad, his curiosity—and protectiveness—piqued.

“His dad’s sick.”

It’s like my father’s spine suddenly compresses, making him seem three inches shorter. He drops into a chair. “How sick?”

Since Mom’s heart attack, Dad takes death and disease personally—even if he’s unfamiliar with the victim. “I’m not sure,” I admit with a shrug. “But I think it’s pretty bad. He needs money for a new liver.”

Dad’s gaze bores into me. “You can’t buy organs, Cass. It’s illegal.”

I let a swallow of tea slither down my throat. “He’s on the list,” I explain, “for the liver. But he’s got no health insurance. And they’re broke. The only cash they’ve got is from Ian’s job at Waterslide Village—and that’s just until September.”

My father’s expression glazes over, letting me know I’ve wandered into too-much-information territory. “I could use him as a dishwasher at The Moondancer,” he offers.

It’s a nice thought and one Ian might take my father up on, but… “I have a better idea,” I say. “Something more…immediate.” I mean, I owe the kid one, since our treasure hunt went ker-bust-o.

“Lay it on me,” Dad says, his hands doing backwards summersaults through the air.

I get up and sling an arm around his shoulder, balance on his knee like in the olden days. “Let’s do what we did for the Angelos,” I whisper into his ear, even though we’re the only ones here.

He gets a big grin. “I’ll tell your mom.”

I had George’s obituary blown up and laminated. It was two days after his funeral when I got up the nerve to clip it from the paper and parade into the Staples by the mall, a twenty crumpled in my jeans to pay for the memorialization. When I tried to explain my request to the woman behind the counter, she shot me a concerned look that said, I’m about to phone the police and report you as an escaped kidnap victim.

Then she saw the o-bit.

While Mom was sick, I thought about obituaries a lot, wrote hers in my head a thousand times, in a thousand different, sparkly ways: a poem; a short story; a laundry list of heroic deeds. I made her into a myth. A legend. Someone the world would have no choice but to mourn, because then I wouldn’t have to grieve alone.

I don’t have a three-by-nine sheet of newsprint summarizing my mother’s life—not yet—a fact that, on one level, convinces me I’ve won the lottery. But another part of me, the part that once had a sweet neighbor, protector and friend named George Brooks—a boy I was just figuring out how to love—feels ripped off, ripped open, destroyed.

I click the chintzy French floor lamp by my bed on, sprawl face-first onto my poufy comforter and dangle my arms for the carpeted floor. From under my bed, I withdraw a shallow, black two-foot-square box I’ve borrowed (or, more likely, stolen, since I don’t plan on returning it) from Haley.

Inside this box is what I have left of George: a dusty baseball mitt with a hole through the palm; the cracked wheel from my (technically George’s) first skateboard; a cool, oblong rock with quartz veins that George and I dug up during the summer we both decided to become geologists; a snapshot of the two of us poking our heads out of the igloo we built in George’s front yard one Christmas; and, of course, the obituary.

Also in the box are things I hope will connect me with George one last time, grant me the power to deliver a final message: a small, knitted doll with X’s for eyes and a black slash for a mouth; an old nip bottle that once contained bourbon and belonged to my parents, but now serves as a vessel for the holy water I pilfered from St. Dominick’s; a map—hand-drawn by me—of Redeemer Cemetery with a glittery, red heart-shaped sticker marking George’s grave; and, last but not least—the pièce de résistance—my cell phone, which captured and forever froze the last words of George Alfred Brooks.

From nowhere there is a knock at my door, which causes me to jump. “What?” I yell. Luckily, I’ve remembered to lock the doorknob.

It’s Haley. “Let me in.”

I want to complain about having a little sister, but the truth is, Haley isn’t half bad. Sometimes she even helps me. I flop off the bed, scuff over to the door and crack it open. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Nah. I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

She shoulders the door open just wide enough to slip inside. “Nightmare,” she tells me, her gaze snagging on the box. “I got a stomachache.”

Haley’s a good sister, but a bad liar; I suspect she’s here to comfort me, instead of the other way around. “You wanna sleep in here?” I ask, the light of a new day slicing over my twin headboard.

She nods meekly. “If you don’t mind.”

Notes From The Trenches

Okay…so I’ve been at this indie author thing for about sixteen months now (if we go by the August 2011 publication of my first two novels, Any Red-Blooded Girl and Film at Eleven). And I thought it might be a good time to take a breath and take stock of the indie experience.

I should start by explaining my decision to go indie in the first place. For me, it was an easy choice to make, since the traditional publishing model is fraught with sadness, disappointment and rejection for nearly every aspiring author, regardless of the quality of his/her product. Publishing is a fickle business, and, honestly, I knew without signing up for the ride that the roller coaster wouldn’t be good for my mental health.

And what I really wanted to do was reach READERS anyway!!!! So I hung out my shingle and set up my wares on this magical place called the Internet.

What happened?

The readers came (in ones and twos, mostly, but sometimes in tens and twenties!). I have now sold thousands of e-books (and given away somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000!). I am happy with sales, considering the hyper-competitive book market and the difficulty of reaching one’s audience in such a media-saturated world.

Yet I still get down (so much for bypassing sadness by skipping the traditional publishing route). Writing books is hard; getting those books into the hands of readers who might appreciate them is exponentially harder. I’m not sure I can do any better in that regard than I am right now, which gives the neurotic voice in my head lots of fodder for self-doubt.

And despair.

Some days, I feel like quitting.

But I haven’t yet.

Which brings me to my point: I have begun another novel. Only the first chapter is complete, but I thought I’d post it as I go, like I did with my last book, Good Luck, Fatty?! I hope you enjoy. (For the record, this novel is not yet titled. And it is a first draft.)

Here we go…

chapter 1

If I believed in heaven, I’d be dead right now. Instead, I’m ricocheting around in the back of Ian Smith’s crappy, soundproof van—the Love Machine, as he sickeningly refers to it—like a pinball on LSD.

“Hey, watch it!” I spout as the van hits another beach ball-sized crater in the road. Something heavy with the feel of metal (a giant Maglite flashlight?) bounces off my forehead in the dark. “Ouch!”

Now, in addition to the rug burns that are splashed over my shins and palms from the wall-to-wall Astroturf I’ve been clinging to for the last forty minutes, I’ll be sporting a happy little bruise or a nascent egg over my unkempt, white-blond brows. A fugly third eye.

The van zings around a turn, tossing me into the wheel well and literally rattling Clive’s cage. In retrospect, I probably should’ve thought better of toting a rescue-crow along on a clandestine recovery mission, but Clive is my insurance policy. If my powers go wonky, he’ll be there with his twitchy British accent to save the day.

With a little pinch, I trigger the glow-light of my sports watch. The time is one thirty-three a.m., an hour at which I’m normally curled into the shape of a cinnamon bun beneath an avalanche of blankets and pillows, sleep whistling its way in and out of my nose.

But Ian needs me—or, more specifically, his father needs my gift. And I haven’t spent two years turning into a psychic voodoo princess (seriously, there’s got to be a better way to refer to the extrasensory perception I’ve honed!) to deny a sick old dude my potentially life-saving services.

“We’re almost there,” I whisper to Clive, who’s been abnormally mute since our little quintet slithered out the back exit of New Beginnings, the temporary housing complex where the city has agreed to stash Ian and his dad for the next three months.

Even in the ink-blackness, I can sense Clive doing a peppy little hop around the forest of branches I’ve constructed in his jail cell to lend it a bit more ambience and authenticity. To be honest, I didn’t think the dumb bird was going to last very long after his mate got squashed by a semi-truck and he nearly ended up as bobcat food in a ditch. But now he seems poised for a comeback.

A few silent minutes pass, and then the van makes a series of left-hand turns, followed by a half mile (or so I’m guessing) of low rumbling along a gravel road before meandering to a stop.

I hope this works, I think. Because even though I’ve been sequestered for the better part of an hour, I’m not really in the groove tonight. Usually, sensory deprivation sharpens my skills, but on such a somber anniversary, I only feel empty—in an unproductive sort of way.

The back doors of the van squeak and groan as they inch open on Ian’s mousy profile. For a guy two years my senior—not to mention a senior in high school—he sure has a lot of growing left to do. “You all right?” he asks warily, his gaze hesitant to meet mine.

“You can look at me,” I say with a huff as I scoot toward the moonlight. “I won’t turn you to stone.” I sweep a cross over my chest. “Promise.”

Ian slips past me and clambers into the van, where he gropes around for something. Then a flashlight beam hits my face. “What the heck?” blurts Haley, my wise-mouthed little sister, from the shadows, presumably referring to the obvious whack I’ve taken to the skull.

I shimmy off the tailgate and skid the back of my hand over my forehead. “Job hazard,” I mutter.

“Looks like crap,” Haley says.

While Ian wrestles the metal detector from its cubby hole, I glance from my sister, who is, as usual, clad in black from head to toe (and not just because we’re aiming for ninja stealth), to her Goth-in-training sidekick, Opal. Why did I agree to bring these irritants along again? I think. Oh, yeah: blackmail. “Just get Clive,” I tell Haley. “Opal can hold the divining rod.”

“She’s such a freak,” Haley whispers, a tone of reverence in her voice.

Opal gives a shaky nod that reverberates through her eighty-pound frame. “I know.”

These kids could have worse role models, I figure. The funny thing is, I’m not what they think I am. I’m more a desperate, heartbroken girl clutching at any means possible of contacting the boy she’s lost than an exalted priestess of the occult. But why split hairs?

Haley bangs Clive to a rocky stop at my feet, and he caws a silence-shattering, “Hell-o!”

“Shhh!!!” I spout, giving his cage a little tap with my toes. Because the last thing we need is this nutso bird alerting the neighbors (who may then alert the police) to our technically illegal high jinks. Then again, we’re loitering at the edge of a tree line, a hundred yards away from the camp Ian’s grandparents used to own, in a lakefront community populated largely by seasonal residents who have yet to arrive for the summer. And it’s two o’clock in the morning. So, really, who could possibly hear us?

“Hell-o!” shrieks Clive again.

It’s hard to explain, but this bird and I have a weird case of simpatico. A kinship of grief. “Come on,” I tell him, wiggling my fingers into his cage. He gives my pinkie a little peck. “Be a good boy.”

Ian pops up at my side, the metal detector slung over his shoulder. “Ready?”

I haven’t thought this mission through. Not totally. “I guess,” I say with a shrug. I hate to ask this, since it might call my powers into question, but… “Which way?”

Ian squints into the trees, trains the flashlight on a muddy spot of earth that could be either a rough footpath or the tire tracks of a 4-wheeler, which he heads for as the rest of us traipse raggedly along behind.

“What are we looking for again?” Opal asks as my tennis shoes sink into a mucky pit of dead leaves and storm water.

“Buried treasure,” I whisper. And, for once, I’m not kidding.

In a heavy voice, Ian grumbles, “Slim chance we’re gonna find it, though.”

My feet are so sopping wet that they’re starting to go numb. I shift off the path onto the trailside brush, which scrapes at my ankles as I trudge ahead. “Thanks a bunch,” I say, “for the vote of confidence.”

“Hell-o!” squawks Clive.

“Pipe down, birdbrain,” I mutter.

Opal shoots me a sidelong glance. “Is that all he can say?”

I shake my head. “Uh-uh. He also says yellow and mellow and fellow.” I give her a grin she probably can’t see in the weak glow of the moon. “And a few other choice things.”

In ten more feet, we hit the perimeter of Ian’s grandparents’ former property, where he abruptly stops and the rest of us clatter into each other like runaway train cars. “Sheesh,” I say when Haley slams Clive’s cage into my knee. “Be careful, would ya?”

The air is heavy and storm-charged. Fat raindrops spit sideways at my face. “This is it,” Ian says, motioning at a boarded-up, weather-beaten cabin that, in the dark, reminds me of the haunted houses I’ve seen in ghost stories on TV.

“Any idea where I should start?” I ask.

Ian shrugs. “Under a tree? That’s where it’s supposed to be.”

“What is it? Like bars of gold or something?” says Haley.

I pry the divining rod from Opal’s death grip (who knew someone so tiny could be so strong?) “Something like that,” I tell Haley. “Coffee cans full of…”

Clive ruffles his feathers, making a sound that mimics our cleaning lady, Rosie, shaking out the bed sheets. “Gold coins,” Ian says. “My old man says Uncle Ted buried loads of them here during the Great Depression, even though it was illegal. Even though the government was confiscating them.”

Haley pulls a quizzical face. “So your uncle was a traitor?”

“Great-uncle.”

“Cool,” whispers Opal.

I can’t help rolling my eyes. “I’m freezing,” I say, wrapping my arms around my chest for warmth (and nearly poking Haley’s eye out with the divining rod). “You guys stay here. I’m gonna get started.”

Ian taps me on the shoulder with the Maglite. “Forget something?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess you’re gonna have to come with me,” I reluctantly admit, “so I can see.”

Haley and Opal exchange anxious glances. “What about us?” Haley asks.

“You’ll be fine,” I say. “Clive will protect you.”

Haley snorts. “More like the other way around.”

I take a step and Ian follows…as do Haley, Opal and Clive (but at least they pretend to be sneaky about it).

Now I’m doomed, I think. Because as scattered as my mind is already, I’ve just become the grand marshal of a parade of misfits and oddballs—which gets me thinking of George.

Two years = 24 months = 104 weeks = 730 days = way too many hours, minutes and seconds since I last saw George Alfred Brooks, the only boy I may ever love.

And I never told him.

And now he’s gone.

And it’s my fault.

“Hey, Cass,” I hear Ian saying across what seems a great distance, “you okay?”

Sometimes I go into a trance, and then I have a hard time coming out of it. With effort, I focus my eyes on the tips of my tennis shoes until they’re as clear as the crystal pendant slung around my neck. “Yep,” I report.

Ian shines the flashlight ahead of us toward the base of a thick tree, on which I concentrate intently, the divining rod weightless and alive in my slack grip. Before George died, I thought of myself as ordinary. Simple. Destined for the meaty part of the curve.

But then I found my power—or it found me. “We’re getting warmer,” I say with confidence, the rod humming gently against my fingertips. I conjure the sight of an empty white room, an imaginary place where walls, floor and ceiling meld together, forging a hole of nothingness. The epicenter of my gift.

The rod tugs left around the tree, to a spot equidistant from the mouth of the lake and the cabin’s lopsided screened porch. I stop at this unmarked place, the rod going still and my feet starting to prickle. “Try here,” I tell Ian, who is already firing up the metal detector, its gauges sputtering to life with a series of beeps and clicks.

I step aside and he scans the earth, anticipation thickening the night air. “Do we get a share of…whatever we find?” asks Haley, the metal detector’s chirping intensifying.

“Are you sure there’s no one out here?” I ask, suddenly nervous. Because my Spidey Sense is tingling.

Mice, I think. Or raccoons. Hopefully.

Instead of answering, Ian kicks a clod of dirt from the spotty lawn, carves a rough X in the earth with the heel of his boot and powers the metal detector down. I hold it upright as he goes into his backpack for the shovel, a collapsible number folks keep in the trunks of their cars or the beds of their pickups for snow emergencies in our untamed part of Vermont (though, technically, we’ve now crossed over into New Hampshire).

Ian snaps the shovel into being and takes a thunking stab at the ground.

“Hell-o!” Clive coos, as if he’s wooing a pretty lady.

“That’s it,” I say. Until I need ol’ Clivey—if I need him at all—he’s going undercover.

Despite the rain and even the cold, I unzip my hoodie and slip it off. Then I zip it around Clive’s cage, stretching the fabric until it’s as tense as an overblown balloon. Poor George, I think. Look at what I’ve done to his most cherished possession. With any luck, I’ll be able to shrink the garment back into shape with an overdose of fabric softener and a spin through the dryer on permanent press.

“Can I help?” Opal asks Ian as he chips away at the dirt, one measly shovelful at a time.

“Nah,” he answers. “Maybe when I get tired.”

Opal shrugs, starts marching in place as if she’s the leader of a one-girl band.

“I think I hear something,” I whisper, straining an ear toward the cottage.

But it’s already too late.

“Hold it right there!” a gruff voice demands, stopping my lungs in mid-breath.

I disobey, swivel my head around for the source of the command, notice Haley and Opal stiffening to attention at each other’s sides.

“What do you think you’re doing?” comes the voice again, booming like a conga drum.

“Nothing,” claims Ian, his hands suddenly still, the shovel balanced on the tip of his boot and his gaze fixed on the cottage’s rickety porch.

A bulky figure steps into sight but remains shadowed. “Looks like you’re up to no good.”

We are so up to good! I think. We’re trying to save a sick old man’s life! I risk a step toward the silhouette. “He used to live here,” I say, throwing an elbow at Ian, “in the summers. You know, the Smiths? Maybe you remember them?”

The shadow advances on us. Finally, I make out a guy my father’s age, with a scraggly beard, lips the color of new plums and the coal-black eyes of a snowman. Oh, and a shotgun aimed—generally speaking—at our heads. “’Fraid not,” he mutters.

“We can leave now,” Haley offers, her voice quavering. “It’s no problem.”

Don’t run, Sis, I tell her telepathically. He won’t need any other reason to shoot you.

“Let’s just—” I start to say, but the man interrupts.

“Not until we get a few things straight,” he says, lowering the gun.

My pulse switches from quadruple-time to time and a half. “Like what?” I inquire softly.

It’s muffled, thank God, but Clive lets out a garbled, “Hell-o!”

The man raises his gun again, sidles up to Clive’s cage and pokes at George’s hoodie with the muzzle. “Watcha got here?”

Please don’t let him be a hunter. Please don’t let him be a hunter, I pray. But, of course, he is. I can just tell. “Oh, that’s my bird, Clive,” I explain. “He’s a rescue-crow.”

The shotgun muzzle, by way of the stranger’s unusually long forearms, pries half of George’s hoodie from the cage. “He rescues people?” the man asks with astonishment.

I shouldn’t laugh, but… “Uh, no,” I say with a nervous chuckle. “I rescued him. His mate died in a car accident.”

A curious look comes over the man’s face. “Take him out.”

“I’m cold,” says Opal. When I glance her way, it’s obvious that she’s serious, her bony little body now racked by an all-out shake.

Ian looks at Opal too. “We’ve gotta get going,” he says, sounding as if he’s trying to talk himself into the idea.

“Take him out,” the man says again.

Don’t kill my bird, I want to say. He didn’t do anything to you. But instead I fidget with the zipper of George’s hoodie until it comes loose; then I unlatch Clive’s cage and shove my hand inside. “Here, baby.”

The bird doesn’t know any better. He really doesn’t. I feel the soft pinch of his claws on my wrist and the heft of his body balanced over my hand. “Okay…” I say as I withdraw my arm, “…here we go.”

Clive flutters his wings, tosses his head from side to side. The man simply stares. “He bite?” he asks, nodding Clive’s way.

I shrug. “He might,” I admit, not wanting to hold out false hope. “Not usually, though.  He’s pretty well tamed.”

The stranger cocks his head, moves in on Clive and me. The birdbrain cocks his head right back. “Mind if I pet him?”

Of course, I mind. “I dunno,” I say. “I guess you can if you want.”

Haley pipes up. “I wouldn’t.” I shoot her a stifling glare, but it doesn’t take. “I mean, sure, he’s cool and everything,” she goes on, “but for all we know, he could have SARS or something. It’s not like we’ve had him tested.”

The man rests his shotgun on the ground beside the metal detector, which I’ve long since abandoned. “I ain’t too worried about it.” He reaches a thick, grungy hand—replete with gruesome nicks and scrapes, calluses and rope-like scars—at Clive’s face.

I swear to God, if this weirdo snaps my bird’s neck or bites his head off like that sicko Ozzy Osbourne used to do (not to Clive, obviously, but to his feathered friends), I’m going to lose my marbles. “Go slow,” I can’t help cautioning as his fingers make contact with Clive’s back, “and be gentle.”

My words of warning are unnecessary, though, because the man pets my bird with the delicacy of a chef trying to crack an egg without breaching its yolk. “Good birdie,” he whispers.

I can’t believe my eyes when Clive takes a dancing leap from my hand to the stranger’s.

And neither can Haley. “Wow,” she says, “he’s never done that.”

What my sister means it that Clive is skittish; I’m the only human allowed to touch him…until now.  “He likes you,” I say, the notion so shocking I’m having trouble making sense of it.

A giddy expression comes over the man’s face, and suddenly he looks more like a Chihuahua than a Doberman Pinscher. I watch saucer-eyed as Clive inches up his arm and comes to rest on the round of his shoulder. “Arrrgghh!” the man abruptly squeals, his lips curled into a fiendish smile, an eye pinched shut as if he’s channeling a pirate. He takes a couple of lurching steps, one foot clomping along stiffly as if it’s supporting a false leg.

“Not bad,” Ian remarks about the man’s performance.

“So, uh, it’s getting late,” Haley points out unnecessarily.

I line up shoulder to shoulder with the man, encouraging Clive to make the leap back to me. As soon as he does, I stuff him into his cage and secure George’s hoodie around it once again. “There.”

“You never answered me,” says the man, the shotgun back in his hands, his hollow gaze pinned on Ian’s forehead.

Opal’s voice is tiny. “Huh?”

“What exactly are you kids doin’?”

Kids? Do we look like we rode our tricycles here? “Listen,” I say, toying with the idea of spilling the beans, “we don’t want any trouble. We’re just trying to find something that belongs to my friend’s…great-uncle.” I tip my head in Ian’s direction. “His dad needs it real bad.”

The stranger lifts an eyebrow. “Needs what real bad?”

“A liver,” I say. “He’s got a disease. If he doesn’t get a new one soon, he’s gonna die.”

I can see the train of thought chugging through the man’s head. “Sorry,” he says, “I ain’t followin’.”

Fine. I guess it’s come down to this. “There’s something buried here,” I clarify. “Money. Coins. My friend’s dad needs them to pay for the operation.”

The man beams a gummy, gap-toothed smile. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

BOOK LAUNCH GIVEAWAY!

Welcome Readers!

If you’re looking for info. on my BOOK LAUNCH GIVEAWAY for GOOD LUCK, FATTY?!, you’re in the right place. For a limited time, I am offering FREE e-copies of my new young adult novel featuring Bobbi-Jo Cotton, an overweight fifteen-year-old girl struggling (often comically) with bullying, promiscuity, and low self-esteem.

Book Description:

Spunky North Carolina teen Bobbi-Jo Cotton is overweight, oversexed, underloved and misunderstood. When Dr. Harvey Lassiter, her former high school principal turned bicycle shop owner—with the help of Lex Arlington, a hometown celebrity—sponsors a charity bike race, Bobbi sees an opportunity to test her Schwinn and her fortitude. And when Tom Cantwell, her best (and only) friend, reveals he’s crushing on her, Bobbi figures it’s time to quit passing out screws like they’re dentists’ office suckers.

What Bobbi is having a harder time letting go of is the resentment she feels toward her missionary parents, who, after abandoning her in the night, have flitted back into her life with a surprise: she’s about to be a big sister.

Will Bobbi win the race (and maybe even lose the weight)? Can she overcome her promiscuous past and earn the trust of the boy she just may love? Will her parents care enough about her—or her new baby brother—to stick around (and if they don’t, will she be tough enough to survive another of their betrayals)?

The only way to find out is to come along for the ride. The way Bobbi sees it, all of life’s questions can be answered from the seat of a bicycle. And if they can’t, at least your hair will look great fluttering in the breeze.

Here’s the lowdown on where to download the book…

FOR KINDLE*:

GOOD LUCK, FATTY?! by MAGGIE BLOOM at Smashwords

FOR NOOK:

GOOD LUCK, FATTY?! by MAGGIE BLOOM at Barnes and Noble

FOR iPAD:

Search iBooks for “Maggie Bloom” or “Good Luck, Fatty?!” (Sorry, i-People, for the lack of a direct link. I admit that I am i-Illiterate. )

(*If you don’t own an e-reader, you can still read GOOD LUCK, FATTY?! on your computer using Amazon’s Kindle viewer for PC. Get the Kindle viewer here: KINDLE VIEWER DOWNLOAD)

Thanks for visiting and happy reading, all! If you enjoy the book, I’d welcome a review.

Gettin’Sappy

The coolest thing happened about a week ago: A lovely eleven-year-old fan left a five-star review of my new book, Good Luck, Fatty?!, at Barnes and Noble. Which got me thinking about why I write in the first place (as an indie author, it’s certainly not for fame or fortune!).

The main reason I write, I decided, is that I love to read. Reading is magical. It takes us places we’d never otherwise go. Reading makes us laugh and cry, shake our heads and roll our eyes. It lets us try on other skins and walk around in them for a while. It makes us more human.

Writing, to me, is a high calling. I take it seriously (although I frequently write about less-than-serious topics). Because when a reader picks up one of my books, they are placing their trust in me. And I always strive to be worthy of that honor.

So, to that lovely eleven-year-old who was kind enough to leave a review, I’d like to say: thank you. You are the reason I do what I do.

(Now, for a little comic relief, a picture of me at eleven years old. Note the delicious velour v-neck sweater; I had a wardrobe full of those things in 1983!)

Maggie Bloom at 11 years old.

Going Soft

Big news for my latest project: While I await the final cover art for my new YA novel, Good Luck, Fatty?!, I have decided to do a “soft release” of the ebook (meaning I will not be promoting it anywhere or charging anything for it*).

I expect this “soft release” period to last between one and four weeks, after which time the ebook will be priced at $2.99 (personally, I think it’s a crime to charge over $4.99 for ANY ebook, under ANY circumstances!).

Please feel free to download and (hopefully) enjoy! If you are inclined to do so, I would greatly appreciate any ratings/reviews (especially if you found something about the book to love ).

*Please note: Amazon will not let me set the price to FREE, so we’ll have to wait for their price-matching system to kick in and lower the price to zero. Meanwhile, Good Luck, Fatty?! can be downloaded in multiple formats at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/241715 and should also be appearing soon (if it hasn’t already) at Barnes and Noble, Apple ibooks, and most other ebook outlets.

Finally, to my readers: I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Cover Madness

So…I have completed multiple edits of my new YA novel, Good Luck, Fatty!, and the manuscript will be in the hands of some trusted beta readers (who will hopefully spot any remaining typos, logical inconsistencies, etc.) in the next few days.

The artist I use for my book covers is currently in graduate school, training to become a pharmacist, so she’s been somewhat unavailable of late. Luckily she gave me a rough sketch to play with, so I’ve been tinkering with colors, image placement, and all that jazz. After many failed (read: ugly) attempts, I’ve arrived (I think!) at a color combo I like.

Maybe you will too…?

(Note: there’s a ton more work to do on this, but I’m sharing “the process.”)

Good Luck, Fatty! Sample Cover