YA Indie Carnival - Luck of the Irish Excerpts

In honor of the religious holiday, the YA Indie Carnival sponsors are showcasing St. Patrick's Day excerpts. 
As the parents of two beautiful strawberry blond-haired kids, my husband and I celebrate this holiday with a vengeance.  In fact, we've all come to think of the day as one celebrating their most unique traits: stunning porcelain skin, light-catching copper highlights, and enviable sprinklings of freckles.  My husband and I - who have dark-brown hair - still can't believe our luck (times two) and celebrate our good fortune by treating St. Patrick's Day like it a March Valentine's Day.  We shower our children with love for the Irish embedded deep within their genes and their souls.

Now, I can't say I have any sort of excerpts related to luck, but I do have those detailing the traditionally Irish physical characteristics of the heroine of The Warrior Series.  Allison La Crosse's every trait was created to make sure my daughter - fourteen at the time - understood her looks were those of the gifted and special, and they should be preserved rather than hidden or covered up.  My daughter just turned eighteen and - thankfully - she is very comfortable in her skin. 

Enjoy the excerpt.

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Ratherthan endure another reprimand, I kept my next round of thoughts to myself.  I mulled over a few of the lifelong questionsasked by friends and neighbors.  Everyonealways noticed I bore no resemblance to my siblings, parents, orrelatives.  As much as I hated to admitit, they were right.
Most ofmy physical traits were unique.  Besidesbeing distinct, they were puzzling because they were unheard of within the LaCrosse or the Etue Families.  I know thisbecause my regular searches throughout the last one hundred years of my Indianand Cajun family ancestors have come up empty.
At 5'11', I had grown taller than any woman in my immediate or extended family.  The only visible quality shared with mysisters was the hour-glass shape and strong arms and legs.  My thick, straight, strawberry blonde manewas inimitable.  And, no one known by myfamily had the same light colored and sparsely freckled skin as mine.
"Rememberwhen we were little and played dress-up? It was so much fun to make believe that we were different people," Iblurted out unexpectedly.
"Yeah.  You remember how we thought you were really aprincess because of your birthmark.  Iused to envy you for havin' that.  It'sso lovely.  I'm still convinced there issome reason you have it," she confessed, smiling in a fond and faraway daze.
She wasright.  I had a blood red, raisedbirthmark in the shape of a cross within the soft trough below my righthipbone.  Given my last name, La Crosse(the cross), its presence seemed more purposeful than coincidental.  At times, I felt special for having such asignificant symbol naturally tattooed on my body.  Other times – like now – it throbbed like itwas a living entity.  Today, I couldalmost feel its beat speeding up the closer we got to Galveston.  The less of a distance there was between meand the island the more aware I was of its existence.

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1.Laura A. H. Elliott author of Winnemucca & 13 on Halloween, Book 1 in the Teen Halloween Series2.Bryna Butler, author Midnight Guardian series3.Heather Self4.T. R. Graves, Author of The Warrior Series5.Suzy Turner, author of The Raven Saga6.Cheri Schmidt, author of the Fateful Trilogy7.Rachel Coles, author of Into The Ruins, geek mom blog 8.K. C. Blake, author of Vampires Rule and Crushed9.Patti Larsen, The Hunted series and The Hayle Coven series10.Amy Maurer Jones, Author of The Soul Quest Trilogy11.Dani Snell's Refracted Light Reviews 12.Fisher Amelie, author of The Understorey13.M. Leighton, Blood Like Poison Series, Madly, The Reaping 14.Kimberly Kinrade, Bits of You & Pieces of Me, Forbidden Mind15.Madeline Smoot, Missing, Summer Shorts, and The Girls16.Cidney Swanson, author of Rippler17.Gwenn Wright, author of Filter18.TG Ayer19.Melissa Pearl, Author of The Time Spirit Trilogy20.Heather M. White, author of The Destiny Saga21.Roots in Myth, PJ Hoover22.Courtney Cole Writes23.Four Seasons of Writing: Variable like the Employment