Six Sentence Sunday

It's Sunday...time again for Six Sentences!

This Sunday, we have Chloe's friend Dana, a true city girl, who's having trouble adjusting to life on a farm. She's just been awakened by an owl...and her own screams have awakened everyone else in the house....

Dana was shaking. “Someone's being killed outside! I heard the screams!”

Gabriel went into the guest room and returned a few moments later, laughing. “Dana, what you heard was a screech owl,” he told her.

“The damn thing sounded like it was being murdered,” Dana said, embarrassed.

 

 

Without A Word: Is It Just Us, Or Does This Look Like...?

Six Sentence Sunday

Today we have another Six Sentence Sunday blog from Same Time Tomorrow, this set earlier in the book, with Gabriel meeting a friend and working partner in the Lake District of England....

Cumbrian Mountains, Lake District

“Hello there, Terry,” Gabriel greeted his friend.

“Hello yourself, you young bastard,” Terry said with a grin, his Scots accent as distinctive as ever. He rose from the chair, extended a hand, and Gabriel shook it, smiling. He made a show of looking at his watch.

“As punctual as ever, I see,” Gabriel remarked, teasing him.

"Some of us didn't have that far to come, so we left late," Terry replied with a straight face.

Six Sentence Sunday

We'll try to remember to do this every Sunday in the future. With Same Time Tomorrow nearly finished, we've had our hands full...and for once, not only with each other! And you can find us today as well at Beishir Books, where we're guest posting on writing erotica. One of our very favourite subjects....

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Chloe knew she had to start thinking about funeral arrangements...but how could she, when she couldn't even wrap her mind around the reality of her mother's death?

Mom, you can't be gone. I can't accept that I'll never see you again, she thought as she went through Linda's closet, trying to decide what her mother should wear. What she'll be buried in. What she'll be wearing the last time I'll ever see her....

I couldn't get through this without Gabriel....

Six Sentence Sunday

It's been awhile since we've done one of these; we thought we'd take a short portion from an earlier chapter in the book, featuring Gabriel on his own, walking in the Lake District in England on a stormy day. Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

There was a bright flash off to his right, accompanied by a loud boom just afterwards. Across the meadow, just twenty or thirty feet away, at the tree line, a  stray bolt of lightning had hit a large tree. He could see its path down the trunk, a zigzag pattern reaching down the bulk of the tree. There was a groan, almost as if the tree itself was calling out… and then the tree started to give way. It tilted, pitching forward, away from Gabriel. He watched as it broke away from the roots, the trunk slamming into the ground, the air filled with electricity and the peculiar smell of burnt wood.

Chivalry And Second Thoughts

Food for thought....

Rough Living, But Someone's Got To Do It

I recently came across some pages from a magazine that were sent to me years ago by a fellow author. The pages were a photo spread of the homes of bestselling authors Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins. The handwritten note accompanying the pages read "What are we doing wrong?"

What indeed! Sheldon even rented an Italian castle in which he wrote one of his novels. Are you green with envy yet?

It started a discussion between James and myself about writer's workspaces. We quite frankly do our best work (and play!) between the sheets, so we know the importance of atmosphere to creativity! And then we happened to come across a rather nice spot. Just the sort of ramshackle country home one could retire to, right?

A ramshackle country home, hmmm? This is the Chateau de Chillon, near Montreaux, Switzerland. The place has something of a fairy tale look to it, set on a rocky islet in Lac Leman, built in a way that makes it look as if it's floating on the water. The earliest parts of the castle can be dated back a thousand years, and it's thought that the site might have been in use much longer. The House of Savoy (otherwise known as the Savoy Cabal) got hold of it back in the twelfth century, and much of the present medieval structure dates back to that early period. These days it's owned by the local canton, and it draws in the tourists.

It's certainly not all fairy tales and magic dust. There are dungeons carved right into the rock itself at the foundations, and in fact during the Reformation, Francois Bonivard, a local official in favour of the religious schism, was held captive on the site between 1530 and 1536. Lord Byron, in between his usual debaucheries (this is a poet who'd shag anyone in a skirt or pants, including his half-sister), paid a visit to the place (and left graffiti behind) and incorporated the story into a poem, The Prisoner of Chillon.

Lord Byron's Parting Gift To The Dungeons

Other authors came in Byron's wake through the 19th century, and the success of the Chateau in drawing in visitors is due to the attention they gave it. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Percy Shelley, and more have wandered through the buildings and corridors that make up the castle, writing about it, shedding light on the place, and the end result is that even today, anyone doing the grand tour of Europe will be drawn to finding their way there. It's just the expected thing to do.

In our writing together and on our own, we already have and will continue to place our characters into settings across the world, and this certainly looks like the ideal spot to set a scene. Have you heard of the castle? Is it the sort of spot you might see yourself stopping in at?