So here we go. New Sunday and a new Six Sunday substitute with a banner that’s just right up my alley. click on it for th link to the list of other participants:
Mmm, just gorgeous. I’ll be posting twice weekly from now on – 8 sentences on Sundays for WWW and a paragraph or so on Wednesdays for the Hump Day Hook event. I figure 2 little ones a week will be more fun and less guilt inducing than trying, and failing, to get round 200 writers on a Sunday.
To kick off with I’ll be posting excerpts from my novel On A Lee Shore, which is set in the early 18th century and is an affectionate tribute to all those 40s and 50s pirate films with people like Burt Lancaster or Errol Flynn swinging in the rigging with their shirts off. I can’t do too much of it because I’ve done sizeable excerpts before and am getting close to my limit for a published work.
Lt Christopher – Kit – Penrose, newest and most uncomfortable crew member on the pirate sloop Africa, is doing his best to cope and, up to now has manage, he thinks, rather well.
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Soon it was the brief twilight, the sun setting in a blaze of gold and madder, stars pricking out overhead before the western horizon had cooled. Kit had the dogwatch, so he took himself off to his hammock, stripping to his breeches but still sweating in the sweltering fug of the fo’c’sle. He slept soundly that night and his dreams, if he had any, were no trial to him. But something roused him, and he lay dozing in that warm hinterland between sleep and waking where nothing much makes sense. Least of all the shift of air as his blanket slipped and the soft humming of “Lowlands, Low.” Then a hand touched his belly and moved down to grip hard. Kit swung a fist, felt it connect, and then tumbled off the other side of the hammock. He landed on his feet, fists clenched, panting with the pain of the tight squeeze.
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There’s nothing as unsettling as being woken from sleep by a death grip on your nads. Or is there? What do you think?
Elin Gregory 