Project Statuses and Snippet (Patreon)

I've been struggling with the next Sam chapter. Partially because we're getting to an important and (I hope) exciting bit, and I haven't quite figured out who I want where. This is the downside of being a pantser and writing things as they come to me. Boo hiss.

I've also been doing my usual juggling. I got Rough Around the Hedges off to the editor. I also got to see the preliminary design for the cover! (Spoiler alert--I love it.) I'm in the process of finding a new agent, which takes a lot of work and research as well. AND I wrote a synopsis for my next YA book this week and I don't usually do that before I've written some of the book. Usually all of the book.

I'm trying a different approach this time. First, because I'm hoping to sell the book on spec, meaning I actually finish writing it. Second, it's a different kind of book in some ways. It's my very first book without magic. Like, zero fantasy at all. It is horror comedy, though, so it's not entirely out of my wheelhouse. Besides the synopsis, I felt like I needed to plan out aspects of the murder and the murderer before I jumped into the book. Which means I had to actually sit down, plan out my characters a little, the murders, and then write the synopsis. Can't say it's an approach I'll do for every book, but I think it's working well for this one. (For those into this sort of thing, I used the beat sheet from Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody to help me structure my synopsis.)

I know full well that I might stray from script once I really get writing on the project, and that's okay. But at least that bit is done. I'm going to try to work on some more Sam pages this afternoon, but in the mean time, I wanted to give you a snippet of See You Next Summer, the YA horror I just started. 

I've just started drafting, so it's a bit of a mess. Just FYI.

--Lish

To Edwin Stephens, or Eddie to his friends, summer was a tricky gift. It gave with one hand—no parents to deal with, no early mornings—and took with the other—he still had to work. When he was younger, that had seemed like such a big thing, to have a job with summers off. But he never really had summers off. Not on his salary. He had to pick up extra work to pay the bills.

At least he didn’t have to deal with an office full of parents in his face, yelling at him about things their children were doing. Instead he worked for his cousin, painting houses in the drowsy summer heat. Earbuds in, mind blissfully blank.

After the last year, he was heavily considering painting houses full time. But he knew he’d go back. He always did.

Eddie tromped into his cramped kitchen to wash his hands. He still had some summer left, and he wasn’t going to dwell on the coming fall semester. He scrubbed at the dirt under his nails from weeding, the water flowing down the sink a silty brown. There was a splinter in his finger, a large one. He should have worn gloves. Eddie turned off the faucet and looked out his small kitchen window which needed to be cleaned, not noticing the creeping darkness at all. He was looking at his face and wondering when, exactly, he’d gotten so old.

He turned off the water in disgust, grabbing for a hand towel that wasn’t there. Laundry day was two days ago, but he couldn’t be bothered and now he had no towels. He considered wiping his hands on his shorts, though they were equally filthy and would have negated the last thirty seconds of work, when someone knocked on the door.

Eddie shook his hands dry with a curse, glancing at the glowing numbers on his microwave. It was late for a visitor. He certainly wasn’t expecting anyone. Eddie lived in his grandma’s old house, nestled at the end of a dead end street. The street itself was kind of dead, having no sidewalks or streetlights to speak of, and wasn’t the kind of place people tended to walk their dogs or anything like that, even in summer.

The Jensen’s dog had probably gotten out again. The yappy little shit had a way of sneaking out of his fence. Eddie usually liked dogs, but Snuffles was all bark and no brains, and anything set him off. Eddie kept hoping the thing would be carried off by an owl or a coyote, but so far, even they had steered clear.

He opened the door, ready to tell whoever was on the other side that he hadn’t seen Snuffles, but he’d keep an eye out.

Only, it wasn’t the Jensen’s at all. Eddie blinked in surprise.

“Oh,” he said, slightly dumbfounded. “It’s you.” Eddie’s mood quickly shifted from dumbfounded to wary. He shouldn’t be surprised that his visitor had found him—it was a small town. A two minute phone call and you could track down anyone in Meadowvale. For once in his life, Eddie wished he’d lived in a bigger city, the kind of place where you had a little anonymity. Where maybe you didn’t know the name of everyone on your block, and you hadn’t dated your neighbor’s daughter in sixth grade.

The kind of place where someone like this wouldn’t be knocking on your door late at night when you were off for the summer, because they wouldn’t have been able to find your stupid door in the first place.

Eddie sighed, digging his damp hands into his pockets and settling in for what he knew was going to be a long discussion. He wanted to keep them on his doorstep out of sheer stubbornness, but the idea of listening to one more word out of his visitor’s mouth without a drink in his hand sounded like sheer torture.

Eddie stepped back, waving his visitor in. “You better come in.” His manners asserted themselves, even though he dearly wish they wouldn’t. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

Eddie nodded, turning his back on his guest and making his way to his fridge.

It was the first of many mistakes on what would turn out to be the last night of his life.