More fun pics below of my Thanksgiving freedom ride. This time of amazing Buddha’s I found lurking in a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit. Amazing treasures like this, just waiting for you to discover. How could anyone not want to live in a city like this???
But first, the rewrite of the rewrite of the rewrite of Sarah Temple’s “Secret Legacy” dream (part of the first scene of the book).Within the dream lie the clues to every mystery you’ll encounter in the book. This is just the first snippet. If you likie, I’d love to share more.
It’s still not clean or even edited by anyone else but me, but I think it’s truer to the overall story. Now that I’m writing through the middle, I can see so much more clearly what the story was trying to tell me when I first envisioned the dream. There will be more changes. Many more, if my method holds true with this book. But, IMHO, this is lovely progress. For those who like to follow the creative messiness of drafting, here’s my first crack at the dream’s opening.
Let me know… Oh, and enjoy the Buddha’s after the excerpt!
Secret Legacy Excerpt 1–Revisited
On Shelves, September 2010
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There was beauty in the ocean’s violet blue. A sense of elicit belonging to the secrets below.
Cool channels wrapped Sarah Temple in the dream’s velvet. A promise of freedom lured her deeper. The water’s current caressed as it charmed, beguiled, seduced her into believing the emptiness could finally end.
It was the need to belong to something that propelled Sarah forward. Deeper than before. Those who wanted to save her were far here.
She’d promised never to come here alone. She wasn’t even supposed to be able to. She needed them with her, to keep the dream from taking over. But they didn’t understand. To them, keeping her mind under control was more important than truth. But without the truth, none of this would end.
A rush of anger shimmered around her, slipped inside her, propelled her through the dream’s welcoming ocean. The tempting taste of darkness slid across her tongue. She drank down the dream’s promises. Heat consumed everything. The fear of facing what was to come alone dripped from her body like tears.
She fought back the panic. This was the only way. The others would have kept her in the safer water they’d insisted on exploring together. They would have kept her where the dream had no chance to lure her into nightmare.
But what if there was light waiting for her within the darkness? What if the nightmare would finally end this.
She’d had to come.
She’d had to be sure.
And now there was no going back. The dream was driving her, and it wouldn’t let go.
Streaks of red waited for her in the deeper water. Ribbons of crimson and other colors curling into a trail for her to follow. She would get there this time. She would silence of the soul-deep cry that called her back.
Cries she could no longer block, even when she was awake.
It was always waiting in the dream, only a whisper when she first waded into the waves, building to a cry as she swam, threatening to rip her heart apart if she resisted. The loneliness became an impossible weight as water grew deeper. The weeping drew Sarah closer to the nightmare’s hidden heart.
It was a baby’s cry, she realized for the first time. It was the whimper of a little girl’s pain. It was the shriek of a woman full grown, betrayed by every indecent thing that had been done to her. It was demanding that Sarah hear. That she understand. That she absorb the water’s purpose as the last of the ribbons of violet and blue and red guiding her vanishing into an absence of all color. Then, suddenly, the water was gone, too.
Emptiness welcomed her. Her feet found solid ground. Terro threatened to consume her and the light she’d told herself she’d find. Her legs weak, her head spinning, she staggered down an endless, twisting tunnel. The cries grew louder, taunting her.
Doors were closed on every side. Locked doors, refusing her entry. Exhausted, Sarah collapsed. But the dream was far from done. It shifted, and she was floating, surrounded by water once more. Drowning in it this time, fighting to pull away. The sea dragged her through the tunnel that was really a house that was really a maze.
Each turn lead back to where she’d begun. Never forward. No way out. No air to breathe. While the screaming grew even louder. Until the cry was coming from Sarah herself.
It had been hers all along.
Covering her ears, she surrendered to the dream’s next whim. Whatever it took to end this. She had to find it. The door that blocked the light. The truth that was nothing more than a name. The precious name intertwined with every nightmare. With Sarah’s soul.
“Trinity…” she said.
The haunting sound of the name joined the cries. Pushing. Lifting. Choking her with desperation. Driving her toward a door covered in ribbons of violet and blue and red, the beautiful colors that she’d first followed into the sea. Only now they were twisting and melting into each other until a dark stain was all that remained.
This was it.
The threshold to a truth Sarah was no longer sure she could bear. Her heart thundered as it strained for oxygen. The water consumed her in doubt. She’d known death too many times to deny the reality the dream was presenting her.
Sarah either fought her way through, or the light would be lost to her forever.
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And here are the amazing Buddhas and their supporting casts… Compliments of the MET in New York!
Tags: creativity & inspiration, Excerpts
what an excerpt; as I was reading it I read faster and faster as if the water was taking me down also. This is very good.