Teaser Tuesday {3}

It's that time of week again :) Yeah, a little less preamble this time, let's get right to it. This is also from Red Herring. Feedback appreciated very muchly! Thanks in advance :)

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Thursday 12:04 p.m.

Outside on the street, the cars whizz by us, fast, fast, fast. Outside on the sidewalk, people stride by us purposefully, hurrying, rushing, speeding. Outside the world whirrs on.

Inside the car though, we have a temporary safe haven.

It is quiet, with Cherry sitting in the driver’s seat and me on passenger side, neither one of us talking or daring to break the silence.

Through Cherry’s window, I can see the police station across the street. Uniformed officers stride handsomely in and out of the building. I can’t look any more, and opt to stare blankly out my window instead. My breath leaves fuzzy little blobs of fog on the window. I lift a finger and draw lines through it.

“So...” Cherry begins.

“So...” I echo. I seem to be doing a lot of that these days, dumbly repeating the words of others.

*While you're here, don't forget to enter to win a $60 giftcard to CSN Stores! Contest ends today (June 29th).

Teaser Tuesday {2}

It's that time of week again, Teaser Tuesday time! This snippet is once again from Red Herring, a YA contemporary mystery.

I'm kind of excited because I'm in the process of conceptualizing and fleshing out an SNI at the moment, Here Be Humans. It'll be at least a few weeks yet before there's any teasers from that though. But at the moment, it is on deck as the next project.

But anyway, back to this week. Feedback is muchly appreciated! And without further ado:

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2:01 a.m.

The liquid is the gilded ochre of donkey piss.

Doesn’t taste much better either.

I vibrate the red plastic cup between my thumb and middle finger, watching the foul substance swirl in conflicting little waves.

Cherry bounces up and down on the bumper of her decade-old red Honda, shaking the car. She lifts her cup at me. “To the last day of freedom.”

I bump mine against hers overdramatically, arm looping in a wide arc. A little bit of the beverage sloshes over the lip of the cup and cascades to the pavement with a splat. “Cheers,” I mock-seriously respond fervently.

In unison we tip our cups back. The foul drink carries the heavy stench of alcohol, sliding abrasively down my throat. The aftertaste will be worse, so I force myself to keep gulping it down as if it were simply grape soda. I finish first and crumple the frail plastic between my fingers.

Cherry’s throat gleams unnaturally pale in the harsh yellow glow of the streetlamp we’re parked under. The smooth column of her jugular undulates as her subtle Adam’s apple bobs with each swallow.

Teaser Tuesday {1}

So there's been this weekly meme floating around the AW forums & the blogosphere, Teaser Tuesday, where one shares snippets of a WIP or a SNI for feedback.

I've been meaning to hop aboard this bandwagon for awhile now, but what school and night class and other activities, hadn't gotten around to it. But today -that changes!

This is from Red Herring, a YA contemporary mystery. Feedback is appreciated very muchly ;)

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Cherry settles into the driver’s seat and pops the key in the ignition. The ancient engine roars to life, crackling the previously quiet night like a whip. She turns to me, her eyes dancing with life. “Let’s have a little fun.”

I reach over and fumble around in the dark for the radio knob, cranking up the volume. I can feel the vibrations of the music’s bass line thrashing through me. Beauty. “Aw, yeah!” I holler.

She guns the accelerator and we shoot forward down the street. I lose all sensation of time and place as we zoom forward, fast. Cherry’s hand is groping the air beside me, and then she clutches the neck of the bottle, taking it from me. She tries to bring it up to her lips, misses, and then finally tips it back, sloshing some down her shirt front.

Suddenly I notice the temperature. It’s stifling in the car. I roll down my window.

Cherry laughs, then lobs the bottle out my window, nearly catching my face with it in the process. I mumble out a muffled exclamation of indignation. She simply lets out a whoop of exhilaration in response.

Because that’s exactly how this feels: exhilarating.