You might notice a new tab at the top of my blog page. I’ve finally started to collect the short shorts, and posted the first one today.
When I post a new story, it won’t automatically send a post to Twitter, because it’s not being done from this ‘Add New Post’ section of WordPress. So, I’ll just make a point to let you know and give you the links when I do it.
Here’s the first one: Full Disclosure – 150 wds
It’s on sale now through Amazon!
Print edition - this includes a link to read the first portion of the book for free (via Kindle, though a pop-up opens and you can view it on your computer) from title page through half of “The C-Word”.
This picks up from where the last part left off, in the logged area that was once a great forest:
She put the acorn back down, nestled it under some leaves and pressed her hand to the ground. It was still moist from a rain two days earlier.
“Feel this,” she said. When she looked up at me, the smile she wore was strained. I noticed the waver of her lips as I crouched beside her and placed my hand upon the earth.
“What am I feeling for?”
“A heartbeat.” She put her hand over mine and splayed my fingers a little more while pressing firmly downward. “Now?”
I did feel something. As I focused on the sensation, more of a sound than a feeling, it became stronger.
“Yes, I feel it,” I said. She nodded.
“Now, feel deeper.”
I closed my eyes and sought deeper for more. Beyond the leaf mold, beneath the deepest roots and even deeper still my thoughts envisioned the deepest roots of the oldest oaks in the forest that once stood in this place. Much deeper than that. Close to the inner heat, I felt another, stronger and more regular rhythm. When I opened my eyes, she nodded, acknowledging what she already knew was there.
“That is the heartbeat of the Earth,” she said. “Now feel again, not quite so far.”
It didn’t take so long to reach the one I felt next. This one was unsteady, slow for the most part but racing and then returning to baseline, so slow as to be almost undetectable without knowing it was there. It didn’t feel right and when I opened my eyes again, she was watching. The look in her eyes was worried, wild and the smile was gone.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The sleeper. He’s waking.”
Today I’ll be outside most of the day, but I wanted to give you a head’s up about tomorrow and Tuesday.
Tomorrow is the first time I’m participating in Excerpt Monday. You’ll see my post show up in the morning, an excerpt which is a continuation from last week’s #teasertuesday.
Excerpt Monday is not to do with Twitter. Anyone with a website or blog can participate. Just take a look at their site to see if it’s for you.
#teasertuesday is a Twitter thing I started. Anyone who wants to participate can, just by posting an excerpt to their blog or website and then posting the link to that excerpt on Twitter with the #teasertuesday hashtag.
When anyone sees the hashtag, the idea is to retweet so the author gets more exposure. A search on the hashtag will pull all the excerpts into one list, so it’s easy to go through them to read. Each week since we started three weeks ago, more and more have participated and it’s become more fun.
Join us if you’re a writer!
I’d love to see other p.99 Tests. In case you’ve landed only on this post and can’t see the previous one, here’s the theory (cut and pasted from previous post:) To see my test page, follow the link below.
March 9, 2010 by Madison Woods | Edit
A friend of mine from Authonomy did this, and I said when I got home tonight I’d post my Page 99 Test. According to the theory she explains on her blog, this is something started by JR Turner, another Authonomy member. The theory is, if a book is opened to p.99, that single page can give the reader a representative glimpse of whether it’s any good or not.
