Ahoy Sea Serpent

Today is the day! All month excited Third Campaigners have been working on the Choose Your Own Adventure Bloghop the brain child of Kerry. If you don’t remember the amazing Choose Your Own Adventure books then this is how it works. First you go to Kerry’s site and read the begining of the adventure. Then you will make a decision. Click on the link to the site that has the next section and you will hop over to the next site. Then continue to read and make decisions till you read, The End. Each time you are faced with a decision you can change the story.

If you haven’t started at Kerry’s post, please click on the Adventure Starts here and begin.

If you are here because you made a the decision to Turn and swim away as fast as you can -without bursting your lungs, then read on.

Jessica’s entry: Turn and swim away as fast as you can-without bursting your lungs.

You turn away and swim as fast as you can go and head for a shadow that looks like it might be a pile of rocks you can hide behind. You glance over your shoulder at the creature. Its mouth opens wide, incisors gleaming in the purple glow of the dome. You swim faster. You are terrified of being sucked in or once again being held prisoner of the snaky tongue, but instead a loud bubbling wail comes out of the huge maw.

The pressure from the beast’s wail sends the water surging and you are carried away on the tremendous current. Seeing rocks ahead you cling to your oxygen tank and swim frantically for their possible shelter. But the awkward weight and shape of the tank is too much and the pulse of the swell carries you past.

When the swell finally slows down and you are able to look around, you find yourself far from the glowing purple dome and the creature. Instead you are floating near a coral reef in sunny clear, but deep, water. Bright Caribbean sun illuminates a school of hundreds of flat dazzling  yellow fish that swim in a dizzying array around you. The loud snaps and crackles of the reef echo in your ears under the bright water and you are amazed by the variety of creatures that lure you to explore.

You swim further into the reef. Without fins the going is slow, and you must watch out and keep your bare toes from touching the viciously sharp coral. Keeping an eye on the coral, and looking from side to side at the unbelievable amount of ocean life swimming through the reef, you come around a clump of sea grass and suddenly the reef drops off into a deep abyss.

Down below you spy what you think is the top of a mast. Excitement thrums through your veins. You have stumbled across a sunken ship.

You swim closer, anxious to see just what treasure might be inside the ship that has lain undiscovered for years. As you draw closer to the ship you notice the windows emanating an unearthly green glow.

Just as you are about to swim down, through the garbled sound of the water you think you hear something that might be the horn of a large ship. Your oxygen is getting lower. Should you take the chance and explore?

Do You: Take the risk and swim down to see what is inside the ship
(Randy/)
Do You: swim on through the bright Caribbean water and find out what is making that sound 
Go Back:Arm Yourself and Prepare to Fight
Start Over: Go back to the beginning.

Leave a comment and enter my Halloween Treats contest today. The prize is Liz Fielding’s SOS: Convienient Husband Required. Saturday’s winner is Babs M., congratulations Babs! Email me your address and I’ll get it in the mail to you!

Final Challenge of the Third Writing Campaign

Thursday’s Bite

a paranormal blog

Newsflash: I just found out that my sensual paranormal novella, Little Red Riding Wolf will be released on February 18th, 2012! Thank you Passion in Print Press!

Today I am posting my attempt at the final challenge of the Third Writing Campaign. It’s been fun and exciting to try to not only write extremely short, but to make it interesting, add a twist and incorporate weird words into my efforts. Here are the parameters for this weeks challenge:

Write a blog post in 300 words or less, excluding the title. The post can be in any format, whether flash fiction, non-fiction, humorous blog musings, poem, etc. The blog post should show:

• that it’s morning, 

• that a man or a woman (or both) is at the beach

• that the MC (main character) is bored

• that something stinks behind where he/she is sitting

• that something surprising happens.

Just for fun, see if you can involve all five senses AND include these random words: “synbatec,” “wastopaneer,” and “tacise.”   (NB. these words are completely made up and are not intended to have any meaning other than the one you give them).

Tacise at the Beach

Cerise sat and extended her long bare legs in front of her, pushing her fingers high into the sky. Reaching for the streaks of iridescent color that heralded the dawn, she strove for enlightenment. It was elusive.

She bent at the waist. Bowed to the flat early morning ocean till her nose scraped the black sand between her thighs, and yawned.

This should be sacred time. Time to prep for her day as a synbatec. Without this time she knew she would lose it, as she applied the syntha-skin to each victim’s body.

But it wasn’t working. The repetitive lap, lap, lapping of the waves seemed repressive. Day after day the bright sun started as a glow, billowing out into a glorious sunrise that did nothing for her. And today was even worse.

Usually she could ignore sounds and scents that distracted her from her early morning tacise exercises, but today the stench of something caught between dead fish and excrement teased her senses.

She attempted ignoring the smell, but the best she could achieve was a flat un-involvement with her environment. This wasn’t working.

She stood, focusing her attention on the salty ocean smell, but it proved elusive, drowning under the putrid stench that wafted through her open mouth and choked her throat.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“That’s it!” Cerise whirled around, hitting the button on her mini-holo sythiziser. The beach disappeared. Her apartment balcony burst into view, a wastopaneer lurching its way down the alley below.

“I’ve had it!” She slammed into her apartment. Shut the door on the noise of the automatic trash collector as it sucked up her roommate’s corpse from the alley pavement.

This wasn’t working. She’d thought getting rid of Tanya would help, but she still couldn’t get into the rhythm.

She’d have to move.

If you enjoyed the post, please vote for me at Rach Writes, I’m number 74. And be sure to check out some of the other fabulous entries and vote for them as well. All of us have worked very hard during the campaign to not only keep up, but write interesting content. And check back on October 24th for the first day of the Choose Your Own Adventure Bloghop, starting at midnight EST on Kerri Cuevas’ blog HERE.

While you’re here, don’t forget to leave a comment to enter today’s Halloween Treats Contest celebrating my contract for my sensual novella Little Red Riding Wolf. Comment to enter the drawing for a copy of Rebecca York’s Dragon Moon.

Congratulations to Sharon Clare for winning Monday’s book! Send me your address through the contact box and I’ll mail your book.

 

During the entire month of October I’m giving away awesome books and everyone who leaves a comment will be entered into my final grand prize drawing on October 31st for three swag bags filled with goodies and a B&N gift card! Leave a comment to enter today!

Update: Thursday’s winner is Nicole Grueber! Send me your address and I’ll send you your book! Congratulations!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Embarking on a New Adventure

Sensational Saturdays

a blog where I write, whatever!

For those of you just joining my blog I started the year stepping onto the board of life. Spinning the wheel and seeing where my little car would take me I drove straight into a class by Angi Morgan, author of Hill Country Hold Up (if you love suspense, you’ll love Angi’s books!) where I learned that first time authors have a world of things to do and no time to do them. Angi described her first year as an author as a roller coaster ride, thrilling, but scary.

Angi’s advice was to jump on the roller coaster now! What would you be doing if you were published? And she told us what she’d needed to do. Not only come through with edits for the accepted book, but whip out a synopis and a second book in record time. And the roller coaster continued with websites and promotion and all the things she’d never thought of doing before being published.

And that’s how I find myself in the predicament I am now, amazingly, astonishingly, awesomely busy. I love everything I do and dropping something is difficult. I am very active in my local RWA chapter CRW. I’m working hard on our OctoberFalling into Romance Tea. I am still juggling reservationist, but have a wonderful person to take it on after today. So that will leave me PRO liason and AOE co-ordinator.

Phew! Along with balancing two websites (if you haven’t checked out Paranormal Freebies, please do so HERE), my crazy self-imposed goals for writing, oh yeah, the dog and the family, I have loaded a lot on my plate. But I’m winnowing it down.

And then I came across the Third Writing Campaign! Seems easy, right?

Just check out the 25+ blogs in my group, and accept the three challenges.

Well I couldn’t leave it there? Could I?

I have added in Kerri Cuevas Choose Your Own Adventure to my plate. But how could I resist? I loved those books as a kid. It was like writing your own story. You would start the story, and it would be about you. Something terrible would happen and at the end of the chapter would be those magical words: If you  choose to stay and fight, go to page five. If you choose to run out the door, go to page twenty-two.

Well, what would you do?

Read them over and over and over, till you had the entire thing memorized. I still see them sometimes in used bookstores. Well read, but still chugging along. So I had to jump on Kerri’s train and I’m thrilled to announce that we’re about to start working on our very own choose your own adventure!

You can check out the list of nineteen intrepid bloggers and authors who will be writing this adventure with me HERE, and I hope when the time comes you will all be adventurous yourselves on October 23, 20011 and go to Kerri’s blog and see what happens when the reader gets to choose!

Did you read these as a child? Share with me if you did and if you didn’t what fabulous books held your attention when you were young?

And don’t forget to check back Monday for Moonday Madness with guest blog by Summer Mahan!

First Challenge of the Third Writing Campaign

The first challenge of the Third Writing Platform-Building Campaign has been issued. To write a flash fiction story (less then or equal to 200 words) with the opening words: The door swung open. Mine ended up exactly 200 words (I could have used another hundred, easy!).  Here goes!

Homecoming

The door swung open. Mart hesitated. Nine years she’d been haunted by this old apartment.

“Who’s there?” Her dad’s formerly strong voice was querulous.

She stepped in, nearly passing out from the stink of mildew and rot.

“Why are you here?” He huddled in the same faded recliner.

“I came back to see you.”

“After what you did?”

“You don’t want me here.”

“I never wanted you. Who wants a child like you, an abomination?”

She swallowed back curdling bile. She should retreat. But she was here, and she wasn’t a coward.

“Dad, I…”

“Just go. You killed your mother, the only person I ever loved. Now look at me, living in poverty and filth. You, your powers, your gift. Get out!”

The ashtray struck her forehead, blood slid down her nose. The thrumming began. She desperately tried to push it down, before it was too late.

“I’m sorry!”

She backed up into the door, slamming her spine. Stars filled her vision.

And the thrumming grew.

“Go!” He howled out a froth of spittle.

It was too late. The thrumming crescendoed and the fire slipped out of her control. She ran, never looking back at the building bursting into flame.

To go back to the challenge home page and vote click HERE. And if you want to LIKE mine it is number 178 under the B&W picture of the tree from my header. Couldn’t load a headshot to save my life!

Campfire Ghost Stories Round Robin

Thursday’s Bite

a paranormal blog

Do you remember sitting around the fire, in the dark, telling scary stories?

In honor of the Third Writers Platform-Building Campaign I’m opening up my blog to all commenters. Did you ever try a round robin? Where one person starts a story and the next person adds a line, then the next? Well if you didn’t, now is your chance. I’m starting the story off, each reply should extend it. I’ll wrap it all up at the end of the day.

The fire crackled and popped, putting out so much heat that Rachel’s face burned, but her back stayed icy. She’d never been anywhere this cold or dark or remote. But Chad had wanted to show her the back range of his ranch. When she’d agreed, she’d thought they’d be staying in a nice cozy cabin, but when they got there she realized they only had a tent.

“Is the moon going to come out?” No bathroom and just a flashlight. She wanted the moon to help her find her way to the bushes in the dark.

“Nope, no tonight the moon stays dark.” He pulled her closer. “We can see the stars better.”

It was a hopeful statement. Dark clouds scudded across the sky and the wind had picked up. Rachel shivered.

She’d never been anywhere this quiet. Then….

Tag, you’re it!