Tag: reading

Another Book Extract

If you haven’t tried one of my books before, it may be worth checking out this snippet from my recent YA Mystery novel. My book extract is from Chapter Two and sets the scene for what is to come later in the story. I loved writing this story and hope to one day become a successful YA writer.

Being Watched

Now, I have to tell you a little more about me and my friendship group. Some people would have described me as a ‘run of the mill,’ ‘blend in the background’ average Joe. Others might have suggested I was a geek. Some even hardly recognised my being there at all. But, Siobhan was different. She was a chameleon who blended in between geeks and jocks and princesses. Living just around the corner from me in our quiet little village since we were born, we had a long history of hanging out. I remember going to the circus with her when we were really small and her holding my hand because I was scared of a clown who kept coming up to us.

“Go away!” I remember her saying, forcefully. Even then, she had my back and the same was true today. When I thought hard about it, there were very few times that I was able to prove to her that she was under my protection too. Nevertheless I was sure that one day I would be able to pay her back for always being so kind and loyal. Better friends could not be made easily.

 

Max, however, was my longest running friend from school. Longest running because we bumped into each other on the very first day of nursery. When I say bumped I mean literally. He was not looking where he was going and came tearing around a corner, banging straight into me and causing us both to bash heads. As a result we both gained large egg-shaped swellings on our heads and were immediately sent home. The next day we apologised to each other but he never really acknowledged that he had been the one at fault. I was over that now. After all, thirteen years of friendship had seen many more challenges. We had tried lots of hobbies together, like fishing and basketball. One day while trying to catch a pike down by the stream in the woods, he leaned back to let the wire go and it had caught itself in the skin of my ear. I had yelled at him to let go but he continued to cast the wire and yanked my ear, causing it to bleed. He had been very sorry for that and soon we both stopped trying to be fishermen, giving it up as a bad job. With basketball, we never really got a look in as the other players were taller and quicker than us, but I did enjoy the time when I threw the ball backwards over my head and knocked him clean out. I felt as though I had got my own back for previous misdemeanours and we laughed about it for days before deciding that basketball just wasn’t for us. Whatever happened though, we were always tight as friends and never really fell out with each other.

 

Only that morning I had been playing a shoot-em-up game with him online. We had teamed up against two opponents from Russia and beaten them hands down. Our scores were high at the moment and we needed to make sure we played daily to remain in the top one hundred. Max had texted me after, “Well done, mate. We rule!” and I had replied with a GIF of a large grizzly bear snapping a tree trunk.

 

He was a bit jealous that I got to spend time with Siobhan as she was his type apparently and he really wanted the guts to ask her out. I had told him that she wasn’t looking to date at the moment so he would be wasting his breath asking. He thought that maybe I wanted her to myself but that was not the case. I never saw her like that at all. If anything, I was more drawn to Martha from drama class. She was an enigma to me. But I wasn’t going to tell him that, as she was a secret crush of mine and not something I wanted to discuss with anyone, even my best friend. For now, he would just have to believe me. I was no threat when it came to Siobhan. The more I thought about it, the more I considered finding out if Siobhan liked guys like him just so I had something to report. That way I would have something to tell him to get him off my back.

As we headed towards the woods, Siobhan looked at me as if to indicate we needed a break. We pulled over by a rickety fence and leaned our bikes against it while we caught our breath. She mentioned school and the hard assignment she had for computing and so I decided to throw Max into the mix.

“You know who knows a lot about ICT. Max.”

“You think he would help me? He has never even spoken to me before,” she replied looking surprised.

“Well it is in his blood. He knows everything about computers. I’m pretty sure he would give you a hand,” I added.

“I guess there are worse people to ask for help.”

“Do you want me to ask him for you?”

She thought for a moment and then said, “Yes, ask him to text me if he is willing to dig me out of a hole.”

I did it there and then and we got back onto our bikes and raced towards the aboding trees. It was such a dark wood and the trees either side of the road seemed to join together across it, closing out the sun and creating awkward shadows across our tracks.

I stopped again to answer the phone. It was mum letting me know that she had taken dad to the doctors as his asthma had been playing up again. Mum never spoke for long so the phone call was soon over and I reassured Siobhan that this kind of thing happened with dad all the time. As mum had said, there was nothing to worry about. Closing in on the centre of the woods, it became dull and mysterious, bringing back memories of years ago exploring the trees, climbing some of them and using the twigs to make bows and arrows. To us as kids, this wood had always seemed enchanted. Magical. Full of intrigue.

We were soon out of the woods and just after it there was a large, old house, slightly set back from the road. It had caught my eye before but today it stood out quite magnificently against the backdrop of fields and trees. It seemed somehow unfriendly; all jaunty and awkward amongst the blowing trunks and waving flowers, half decapitated with leaves and petals strewn around their stark bodies. Gusts of wind were making that small stretch of hill almost impossible to pass. A car swept past us and suddenly I saw something fly off of Siobhan’s shoulders and sweep into the yard of this daunting Manor.

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Thank you so much for reading my book extract. It is hard to promote a new YA book as an independent writer so I appreciate any reads or comments. If you want to find a new TV show to watch then have a look at my review of Willow on Disney Plus.

Caused By Climate Change

I recently felt inspired to create a series of short stories about problems caused by climate change. It is my intention to start writing fiction about what the world may well be like in ten years time.

The first story is set in my homeland, the farming flatlands of the Cambridgeshire Fens. I decided to share it with my blog readers as many of you have environmental interests and love short fiction too. I hope this might make you think about what problems may be caused by climate change and how they will affect peoples’ lives.

Drowning At Home

Trudging back towards the house, Mark couldn’t help sighing loudly. It wasn’t as if he had an audience so he felt that he could just let it all out. His dog, Angry, didn’t take much notice as he splashed around aimlessly behind him.

“You get as dirty as you like, but you’re not coming back in looking like that. Claire will kill me.”

“She’ll probably kill you both anyway!” came a muffled tease from an upstairs window.

“Can you fill the dog bath and bring it out for us, mate?”

While Mark waited for his son, Charlie, to fetch the manky tin can they called a dog bath, he found himself looking vaguely out into the distance. His mind took him back to just a few years ago when there was a lovely playing field behind their garden. He remembered walking the dog with Charlie, playing with kites and even setting up a tent one summer. That field resembled nothing but happy memories. It was weird to think that none of those things would ever happen again. Not there, at least.

He should have known all along that buying a house on the edge of town was a risky business. But it had seemed ideal at the time. Reasonably affordable with a big garden and miles of beautiful fields stretching behind it. How could everything have changed so dramatically in just a few short years?

Claire was besotted with the woodland trail that was just around the corner. He remembered her excitement when they took their first stroll through the horse chestnut trees, with their sprinklings of conkers lying amongst piles of colourful fallen leaves. She was fascinated by Autumn leaves and used to collect them and make a little display in their dining room each year. In fact, she had a different table setting for every season. They both had shared a love for nature and especially adored the charming way that winter was able to blanket a landscape so impressively.

Right now it was still winter and it should have been a time of whiteness and frost. Their garden should have been covered in white dust and the bird feeder should have been keeping a red robin satisfied during the darker days of January.

Claire should have been laughing at Charlie as he raced his dad down the only hill they had nearby on his makeshift sled. They ought to have been eating roasted chestnuts and enjoying hot chocolate, after long winter walks and playful afternoons crunching through the snow-crusted lanes.

But no.

That wasn’t how it ended up.

The dream they both had of an idyllic home on the edge of a small Fenland town hadn’t played out the way they had hoped it might.

* * *

Needless to say, the constant rain had become almost unbearable. Every day they looked out of the windows of their bedrooms and wished for a dry day. Hoped for a spot of sunshine to emerge from the souring grey sky. Prayed for something other than the mundane repetitive dullness that they had seen for the past few months.

“Even when the land was covered in snow, we used to at least get some winter sunshine,” Claire had commented as Mark sat scratching his head over the latest Wordle problem.

“It won’t last forever,” he mumbled unconvincingly before taking another sip of his now only lukewarm coffee.

“It’d better not. A few more centimetres of water and we’ll be walking out into the sea.”

At that moment, Angry came rushing into the living room and bounced onto Mark’s lap, making him spill a bit of his coffee onto his dark blue jeans.

“Oi! Scram! You nearly soaked my iPad!” he yelled, shoving the dog back onto the floor where he sat panting.

Claire picked up the dog and made gooey eyes at him. “We’re gonna have to get used to everything being drenched if this weather carries on.”

She gave Mark a disappointed glare before making her way back into the hallway where Charlie was pumping up his bike tyre. He had punctured it while cycling to school, on one of the many pot holes that was currently disguised by about 10cm of water and mud.

Charlie looked fed up as he struggled to fix the cap back onto the tyre. With her usual patience, Claire sat down next to him and held it still while he twisted it carefully into place.

“Thanks, mum. I had butter fingers.”

In the background, Charlie could hear the TV being switched on and the News blaring out about more flood warnings. He picked up the dog, who was now feeling as if he was being passed from pillar to post, and swung into the lounge, listening intently to an old man who was talking about his struggling farm.

“Nobody saw this coming,” he said in what Charlie recognised as a very local Fenland accent.

“Yes they bloody did!” he said, grimacing at the screen as if the farmer were stood right there in their living room.

“Our family has owned this farm for fifty years or more. There ain’t no way we can use most of the land again.”

“You can’t blame him for what happened but WE all knew this would happen. For sure.” Charlie waved a hand at his dad as if telling him to take notice.

“These freak storms have really messed up the farming industry. It will take a long while for the land to get back to how it used to be. A long while for it to dry out.” The farmer looked a combination of confused and honoured to be speaking on the News. A sort of wry smile sneaked across his face as he said, “Never mind. These things ‘appen, I s’pose.”

Charlie was getting himself into a flap.

“Yeah they do ‘appen. They were always going to ‘appen. But there is nothing freak about them. It’s not like they are one offs. This is the third year that we have had nothing but rain through winter and spring. Wake up and smell the coffee old man!”

“Speaking of coffee, does anyone want a fresh cup?” asked Mark kindly, hoping to distract his son for a moment.

“Not now, dad.”

“So, do you learn about all this at school, Charlie?” asked his mum as she popped her head round the door midway through tying a scarf around her neck.

“Mum, you know we do. I bet even you oldies learned about global warming.”

“Well it was mentioned but they made it seem like it was years away from affecting anyone,” mum smiled as she then began to squeeze her left foot into a welly boot, holding onto the doorframe for support.

“Ignorance is bliss,” said Charlie before waving her to stay quiet while he turned up the TV.

“Well I’ll just ignorantly nip to the shop and buy us all some chips for dinner,” said Claire as she unlocked the front door and opened her umbrella in one swift motion.

The News went on to discuss the continued flooding and dad came in just as the presenter mentioned Ramsey.

“What about Ramsey?” he asked, placing his mug onto a coffee table.

“Let’s see what our East Anglia reporter has to say on the matter,” the Newsreader said, bleakly.

“Hi Rob, I am standing here almost knee-high in water just on the edge of Ramsey. As you can see, this used to be a footpath which led through the local woodlands, but now it is more like a swamp.”

Suddenly, Charlie legged it upstairs to see if he could see her out of his bedroom window.

“There is a severe risk now of damaging floods extending into this small Fenland town. Sandbags are being piled up to try and protect connecting roads but a lot more needs to be done before Ramsey becomes waterlogged.”

Mark shook his head in disbelief. Had it really got this bad?

Charlie could be heard swinging his window open and shouting, “I can see a TV van parked by where the swings are!”

Mark couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Apparently a further storm was coming and the local river had already been allowed to flood right across the flood plain. There was nowhere left for the flood waters to go.

“Tonight, the latest storm will cause considerable local floods which may well not retreat until summer,” the drenched reporter continued, looking well and truly hacked off.

“Until summer? No way!”

“What did she just say?” asked Charlie as he leapt back down the stairs, jumping two steps at a time. “Did she say anything about how long it would last?”

“Until summer.” His dad’s face was a picture. It looked like he had just seen a ghost.

Charlie wasn’t as surprised as Mark, but he could see that the situation had become dangerous. He changed the channel on the telly and turned it down to a low volume.

“It’ll be alright, dad,” he said calmly, plonking himself on the arm of the sofa chair, next to Mark. “But we do have to start taking climate change seriously. It’s the only was we can stop things becoming worse.”

His dad looked at him remorsefully.

“It’s all our fault isn’t it. My generation. We made this stupid mess. We should have thought more about the future.”

“I don’t think you can take the blame. And it started long before you were even born. It began with the industrial revolution, dad.”

“You’ve got your head screwed on about all this. Making us walk and bike all the time. I know what you’re doing. It all makes sense.”

“All these green things I keep telling you about. They aren’t just homework projects. They are good for the environment. That’s why I wanted a vegetable patch.”

Mark realised in that split second that he loved his son more than anything. He remembered the arguments they had had about solar panels being fitted on their roof.

“You know what, we will get some solar panels installed after all,” he said warmly.

“That’d be really cool,” smiled Charlie. “But it won’t solve all our problems. We have to find a way to stop the flood drowning our house.”

“Yes we will. Let’s face it, we won’t be able to sell the house now. Not without losing a lot of money. Let’s get online and find out how we can keep water out for now.”

“But dad…” Charlie was now getting that intense look on his face that he only got when he was really concerned about something or someone. “We have to do way more than that. We have to rally the government. We have to be proactive so they properly start doing something about it all.”

Mark pulled Charlie onto the sofa and hugged him tightly.

“Oh we will, mate. That you can be sure of. We will fight for change.”

“Dad…”

“Yes, mate?”

“I bloody love you, dad.”

“Me too. And that is why we’ll do this together. Me and you against the world.”

“Me and you and Mum against the world.”

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read my brand new short story about issues caused by climate change. Please drop your thoughts in the comments and consider following my blog for future similar content. For another of my environmental articles, check out Why Recent Snow Isn’t Enough.

Sharing A Brilliant Book

Today I am excited to share with you the work of another Indie writer, Maureen Morrissey. This tale of growing up has an energy about it and brings with it a certain amount of nostalgia. It is very rare that I will share an indie author’s work, unless I feel that it is of a high standard and would intrigue my readers. This extract from a brilliant book is very worthy of checking out, commenting about and sharing with reader friends.

Maureen – showcased author

Snippet from Sonder: Janie’s Story

Janie, like many city kids, quickly became a member of the neighborhood pack once she began school. In all weather on Saturdays, the children in the area burst out of their apartments as early as eight o’clock in the morning and began their street games. Janie and Greg stayed in their pyjamas to watch Rin Tin Tin or Davy and Goliath cartoons or Bozo the Clown, until their father woke up around ten and threw them out of the house.

Waving at Ben, who was not allowed to join the games and was watching out the window, Janie followed Greg to the common backyard behind the apartments, where a dozen kids were in the middle of an intense game of Ring-a-Levio.  

“How do you play, Greg?” Janie asked a bit anxiously. The yelling and wrestling of the kids, mostly bigger than her, was intimidating.

Greg put a reassuring arm around her shoulders as they watched the game.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be on my side for your first game.  One team is hiding and the other team is looking for them.  When they find someone, they have to hold on to them and yell, ‘ringalevio one two three, one two three, one two three, ringalevio one two three.’ If they can say the whole thing without letting him get away, the one they captured goes to jail.  See, jail is the old sandbox there.  When they catch the whole team, they switch places.  But if one of the hiders can sneak in and tag the jailed ones, they can escape and hide again.  Got it?” 

She did, and the game went on for over an hour until they all got tired of it. Janie had caught on quickly.  Tackling one of the bigger boys, she wrapped her arms around his knee and her legs around his ankle, hanging on for dear life and screaming the entire Ringalevio call Greg had taught her while the boy, laughing so hard he almost wet his pants, tried to shake her off his leg and finally gave up, falling to the ground.  Both teams cheered as she triumphantly led her captured enemy to the jail.

After the game, the whole group trouped around the neighborhood for a while, and then ran down to the Grand Central Parkway side road. At the foot of the overpass into Flushing Meadow Park, they hung around a garbage-strewn area. They took turns climbing into a tree with an old piece of plywood, precariously perched in lower branches, that served as a treehouse; and played pirates. 

When the noon fire bell went off, they split up, yelling, “See you after lunch!” and ran back to their apartments. Gulping down peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese or rice and beans or Pop Tarts and milk, they were back out running the neighborhood in under an hour.

Janie loved being a big girl, and loved going to school every day. She leaped out of bed with the sun, ate her Apple Jacks or Cocoa Puffs cereal sprinkled with extra sugar, and was dressed in her light jacket, hopping up and down by the front door while Greg was still slurping the milk out of his bowl at the kitchen table.

“Come on, Greg! We’re gonna be late, hurry up!”

“We are not going to be late, Janie. Hold your horses, I’m coming.”

“Mom, can I walk by myself? Greg is taking too long!” she called.  

Their mother had the window screens leaned up in the bathtub, working to remove the brown crusty filth caked on them since she had cleaned them just a month ago.

“Not until first grade, dear.  You won’t be late, give Greg a few minutes.”

When he finally led her down the stairs, she zoomed around the corner and found Deidre waiting on her cement stoop.  They grabbed hands and skipped ahead of the boys, singing nursery rhymes as they went. When they got to the corner of the busy 108th Street, they did not pause to look for traffic as they began to cross.

“Janie! Deidre! Stop! Stop!”  Greg and Deirdre’s three brothers screamed as they raced towards the girls, who did not hear them through their singing.  

Just as they stepped into the street, the boys reached them and roughly pulled them back onto the sidewalk. At that second, a large sanitation truck was backing up at the intersection to pick up the overflowing trash cans, right where Janie and Deidre had been standing.

“And this is why you won’t be allowed to walk yourself until next year!” Greg yelled into Janie’s shocked face, while Deidre’s brothers gave her a few solid smacks on the arms and bottom. The tearful, shaken Kindergarteners held their brothers’ hands for the rest of the walk.

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Thank you so much for checking out Maureen’s work. Hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I did and may wish to check out her Amazon Author Page. Also, kindly drop a supportive comment if you can. Authors welcome feedback and it is lovely to get enthusiastic responses.

If you want to discover more about the value of book reviews, check my article on Why You Should Write A Book Review.