• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teasers:

It’s difficult not to always be aware of those high walls and the pressure of the water beyond. Difficult to think of the City of Divine Beings as anything other than a disaster waiting to happen. But the Thais are stubborn and have fought to keep their revered city of Krung Thep from drowning. With coal-burning pumps and leveed labor and a deep faith in the visionary leadership of their Chakri Dynasty, they have so far kept at bay that thing which has swallowed New York and Rangoon, Mumbai and New Orleans.

- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

How low can you go?

Use the photo as inspiration for a story of 140 characters OR 140 words. It doesn’t have to be exactly 140, just not more. This one is 140 characters.

I adored the new color on my table and chairs. It provided the only spot of color in the whole room. Maybe red cushions would complete them?

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

Don’t how it is for other people, but for me, if I don’t write for a while, writing becomes harder and harder to do.

It’s happened before; I go months without writing anything. I tell myself I will do it during summer vacation or next month when I have more time. But it doesn’t happen. Before I know it, the whole year is gone and I have only managed to write a few dozen pages. Not even one whole story.

It’s been a while since that happened. In fact, it hasn’t happened since before I started this blog and for that I am grateful. I think that’s a side effect of having this blog, one I didn’t expect.

I need to write often for it; I write friday flash most weeks; I see what other people are

writing. It’s all very inspiring and helps me to keep working on the WiP. Even when I don’t feel like working on the WiP, it’s easier to force myself write at least a little these days. I think when I work on other pieces, on longer pieces to submit to magazines, all that helps to keep the juices flowing as far the WiP goes.

But still, still I know if I don’t write for a while it will very difficult to start writing again at the end of the month. There is a chance I might not be able to write a damn thing for the next few weeks. It worries me.

There is a good chance I might not get a chance to read anything either, but that doesn’t worry me. I know what the saying is: if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have to write. But sometimes you can’t do both and have to pick one or the other. Reading is easier, of course, in a lot of ways.

Writing is hard if I am exhausted or lack focus or if I just don’t have a quiet space to work in.

Even if the muse goes on vacation after a couple weeks of not writing, he will come back (yes, my muse is male). I have no doubts about that, but he might take months to come back to me. It’s worrying. 

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The offering’s chassis was cold. Air barely moved inside the flesh and its little lips were blue. He felt a brief spurt of anger toward the parents; how could they do this? Offerings were not meant to be so small.

He cocooned the babe in layers of air and heated it with his own breath. When it opened blue eyes, he carried it into the clouds.

The elders would know what to do, how to care for it.

The elders told him to reject the offering and leave it where he found it.

He decided to disobey and keep it.

Copper Beach is the first in a new series. At least, it’s a series I’ve never heard of before. After reading it, I am pretty sure this precedes the Harmony series by the writer’s alter ego: Jayne Castle. Harmony is a different world, one where people emigrated from Earth via a portal. The portal closed at some point. I expect this series will detail these events.

Maybe it will even answer the question I posed about Harmony’s marriage traditions here.

The book itself – Copper Beach was engrossing, quick read.

In this book, there are no references to a psi society. I found this odd. I mean, I assumed even pre-Harmony, they must be aware of each other and have some form of leadership. But maybe not.

The male lead, Sam, comes from a family with psi talent. His strength and his siblings’ strength was made stronger by the crystals and amber. Maybe right now, everyone’s talent is weak. Except those who were exposed to the crystals and amber!) That’s what I am assuming anyway. Maybe all the strong talents at Harmony come from the people first exposed to the crystal (i. e. Sam’s family and employees).

Crystal exposure doesn’t explain Abby’s power; her mother is long dead and no one else in her family believes in the paranormal. They event sent her to a school for troubled teens when she accidentally set the house on fire.

Abby and Sam are explosive together. They burned up the sheets rather early, I thought, but it made sense in the book so . . . Besides, I enjoyed reading about it. LOL

Sam is an excellent bodyguard; he even has related experience with some agency he refused to name (The Jones from the related Arcane series, maybe?) and he takes good care of her. He foils multiple kidnappers, a burglar and even helps save her stepbrother’s business. (This, despite the evil step-grandmother insisting she get no sure of the family fortune since childhood.)

Favorite scene: The scene where Sam and Abby go to her father’s book-signing and she has to pretend to have the perfect blended family. In truth, she doesn’t care for most of her family and her father and stepmother are heading for a divorce. Apparently the father has a history of marrying useful wives and divorcing them later. Not sure what it says about me, but this scene made me laugh.

The ending was good, too. Not surprising, because you know who the villain is from the first page. Ms. Krentz makes no effort to keep it secret. But it enjoyable all the same. I liked how they got him.

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* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teasers:

Ngaw. It shouldn’t exist. Yesterday, it didn’t. Yesterday, not a single stall in Bangkok sold these fruits, and yet now they sit in pyramids, piled all around this grimy woman where she squats on the ground under the partial shading of her tarp.

- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

How low can you go?

Use the photo as inspiration for a story of 140 characters OR 140 words. It doesn’t have to be exactly 140, just not more. This one is 138 characters.

The empty chair mocked him. He sighed, begin cleaning up his desk. Personal papers here, business papers there to give to his replacement.

The floor under her trembled with the volume of the music, with the weight of dancing people. Colored lights speckled the air around her, but she stood still.  

How could he? How could he?

His face gleamed with sweat and he smiled. As if he had all the answers.

I’m going to do this.

She slipped a manila envelope out of her purse and handed it to him. The music was too loud to say anything. Not there was anything left to say.

Maybe this will free me. Maybe I will feel like the world is full of possibilities again.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR

Lists if they like your teasers!

I think this is a new series.

Still reading this. Been a busy week, me not being finished yet with Copper Beach is not a reflection on the book.

My Teasers:

Coppersmiths are all real smart, and Sam is probably the smartest of the bunch. If he had killed that woman, there would have nothing at all to link her death to him. He sure as hell wouldn’t have left her body in his own lab. She would have flat-out disappeared. No problem making that happen here in the islands. Lot of deep water around these parts.

- Copper Beach by Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick/Jayne Castle

Related articles

• Teaser Tuesday: Copper Beach (storytreasury.wordpress.com)

At some point a Curtain (a portal) opened on Earth to other worlds. One of these worlds is Harmony. People went there and colonized it. They brought their pets and gadgets and what not. Than the Curtain closed, trapping everyone on Harmony and leaving them with no way to get supplies. Their very survival was in question.

At this point, from what I understand, the colonists made two types of marriages: convent and convenient.

Convent Marriages are nearly unbreakable. At least not without sever legal and financial consequences. I am guessing there are social consequences, too. Marriages of Convenience are, well, convenient. Easy come, easy go. Unless you have children, in which case you end up automatically in a Convent Marriage.

Me, I don’t get it. Even the characters call Marriages of Convenience a short-term affair, only respectable. Which seems kind of silly to me.

Why not just move in? It’s before you decide you want to spend forever and ever with your SO. It’s while you are deciding your SO is the one you are meant to be with forever and ever.

Why even bother with a short-term marriage? (Also does short-term marriage feel like an oxymoron to anyone else?)

Creating a world with two different types of marriages seems excessively complicated to me. I don’t understand why she did it at all. What is the point? Really, I don’t get it.

Related articles

• Teaser Tuesday: Copper Beach (storytreasury.wordpress.com)