Thursday, April 13, 2017

Kindled Roses Excerpt

I'm back at it again with a novel in progress that's currently titled Kindled Roses. This is an excerpt from the very first chapter. Please let me know what you think in a comment!

My shoulders shook, and something on the desk moved. I looked up, rubbing my eyes with my hands. Blurring tears pushed aside, I saw one of the envelopes twitch, wrinkling up in on itself. White faded to the color of the shadows beneath my bed, comforting and gray. Then, gray darkened all the way to black and a tiny whiff of smoke struggled up from the paper. A flickering glow no bigger than an ant formed on the very edge of the corner, even as the paper crumpled into ash.
Fire. Warmth. Out of my control again, or exactly inside it. Sometimes it was so hard to tell.
©2017 Emily Blue

Saturday, April 1, 2017

What Gram Said, Part Two

It's Saturday! That means the conclusion to What Gram Said is here! Part one is still up, if you need a reminder.

"What Gram Said, Part Two"

...That’s when I looked at her and said, “Gram, cardinals aren’t born. They hatch. They come from eggs.”
Her willowy old hand came out and whacked me upside the back of my head. “I know that!”
It didn’t hurt much so I didn’t mind. 93-year-old widow slowly dyin’ of lung cancer, I guess she can say and do what she wants.
Thing is, I been sittin’ on my futon for the whole morning now and the birds just keep comin’. At first there was only a pair. Real bright, like the boys always are. I waited for them to get into it because they both perched there on the same telephone wire, like they both wanted that spot. One of them was just askin’ for trouble. But they just sat. Sat and preened.
Now it’s like the sky outside my window is bleedin’. Everythin’, everywhere, covered in droplets of red.
And I’m just waitin’ now.
©2017 Emily Blue