Thursday, March 15, 2012

Sample chapter from my original novel

So I've been working on my original novel lately, & I've been so pumped to get back to it that I added an introductory chapter to the beginning, which I thought I'd share with you all. I'd like to state that I haven't finished the novel (it's probably about 2/3 complete) & I haven't even started looking for a publisher, but I plan on doing just that very soon.

Oh, & for my TWP readers, I still plan on actively working on that still, but for now I have no future plans to write any more fanfiction since I want to work on my original stuff. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the sample chapter from my novel:

Chapter One: Goodbyes

She was nineteen when she discovered that she was pregnant with her son, Dalton.

She was twenty when she lost him.

It didn’t rain the day of his funeral—a word that she despised; there wasn’t so much as a damned cloud in the sky to mourn his loss with her. The rain would have been a welcoming sight indeed, offering the illusion that the sky had opened up and poured out its grief for the tiny boy that had so recently been buried in the earth—her baby boy that had never had a chance at life.

But it hadn’t happened that way. Instead of standing in the rain, Fallon O’Malley found herself gazing out at the clear, sapphire sky over the southern West Coast, studying the way the white crests of the waves kissed that sky, the way the tourists and surfers littered the golden shore and dotted the water.

Oblivious. It was all completely oblivious to her pain, to the fact that a tiny baby boy, who’d been dead before he’d ever even breathed his first breath, her Dalton, was dead. The sob worked its way up in her throat, but she forced it back out of fear that if she began to cry she might not ever stop.


Abruptly, she became aware that she was no longer alone, and there was no need to turn her head and glimpse the telltale bright red hair that glinted in the sunlight to know that Lucas had slipped up behind her to offer his silent support.

Of course it was her twin brother who had come, and not Kyle.

Kyle had been too much of a coward to face the funeral, to see his own flesh and blood buried in the earth. He’d been too much of a coward to just be there for her, a thought that filled her with an insurmountable rage that was almost enough to drive out the brunt of her grief—if only for a single moment.

“Where are you going?” Luke asked after several minutes in which the lingering silence swelled between them, and Fallon couldn’t help but smile grimly to herself. Her brother knew her too well.

Or else he’d had another dream, or vision, whatever one wanted to call it.

Luke had had his first vision at the age of five: He’d scared their mother shitless by announcing that their neighbors would die in a car wreck; what had scared her even more had been when, later that week, the neighbors’ family vehicle had been pummeled by a drunk driver at two o’clock in the afternoon on their way to a soccer game.

There had been no survivors.

While his visions always proved accurate, they were erratic: For instance, he hadn’t “seen” Dalton’s death—at least, if he had, he’d chosen to withhold that knowledge from her. Sometimes, like now, Fallon thought to ask him, but then she decided that she’d rather not know if he’d known. It was best that way.

At any rate, the twins‘ abnormalities certainly didn‘t stop with freaky death predictions: For one, they’d never been sick a day in their lives. Not once. Ever. And while Fallon didn’t possess any “psychic abilities” like her brother, she excelled at sports—unnaturally so. She could run and swim faster and further than anyone she knew. Faster and further than should be possible for her. Also, her hearing and eyesight were keenly sharp, more so, she was aware, than was normal.

“What makes you think I’m going anywhere?” she finally responded to her brother’s question after several heartbeats, curiosity getting the better of her. Her eyes were still locked firmly on that sprawling California sky, but she no longer saw the stunning view: All she could see was the incessant, horrifying image of Dalton’s tiny coffin being lowered into the ground, replaying in her head again and again, and the priest saying, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

In spite of her outward calm, she felt like she might be going a bit mad.

“I’ll miss you,” Lucas said simply, a resigned-sounding sigh escaping his lips.

Of course he was right about her leaving: She simply couldn’t stay here, not now, not after this. There was now too much agony in every memory.

Remembering her pregnancy, and birthing a lifeless baby, was too painful.

Remembering the beautiful, golden-skinned, sandy-haired boy on the beach that she‘d fallen in love with at the impressionable age of fourteen, and how that same boy hadn‘t been able to face her after the death of their child, was too painful.

“You’ll come visit?” she asked her brother.

“Can’t come visit you if I don’t know where you’re going, little sister.”

She almost smiled at that: Of course Luke had no way of knowing who the “little” sibling was, seeing as they’d been adopted in a “closed adoption” shortly after their birth and therefore had no knowledge of their birth parents.

“I’ll know it when I get there,” she replied, thinking that this was the part in Hollywood movies where the heroine would say, “Anywhere but here.”

Lucas moved into her line of sight then: She barely had a moment to register that he was barefoot but still wearing his undershirt and tie when she was suddenly engulfed in his warm arms, her head nestled in the crook of his neck, his chin on the top of her head.

“You’re my best friend,” she said, her voice muffled by his chest, knowing that the words were cheesy but uncaring: It was the simple truth. Her twin brother was her best friend, always had been.

In response, Luke tightened his hold on her and kissed the top of her head. “Ditto, kid.”

Only then, in her best friend’s protective arms, did her body begin to quake with the powerful grief that had become too difficult to contain, too unbearable, and so Lucas stood there and he allowed her to sob and scream against his chest, absorbing the most acute of her emotions.










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