Precy Larkins--YA Author: excerpt

Showing posts with label excerpt. Show all posts

On Why YA Is Popular Plus Special Excerpt from WIP "Ashes for Skin"

I lost yesterday's post, but on a positive note: Blogger is back! Hooray! I know it was inconvenient, but for someone who is tech-handicapped like me, I can only say I'm in awe with what they have to deal with--there's a million and more blogs on blogspot (which translates to a million and more unhappy bloggers yesterday) and really people, that's a LOT. Which means, Blogger had a lot of work to do to get their server running. Not easy. So I say let's cut them some slack for letting us get some downtime and sunshine (Did you go outside? It is beautiful. There's more to life than the web, you know.)

Anyway, I have to rewrite my post since I forgot to back it up apparently. I managed to back up the other posts, but I overlooked this one. Which is no biggie. It's not like it was universe-changing or whathaveyou.

So. YA. Why is it so popular? I see literary agents taking up YA when they didn't use to before. I hear people discussing YA books, and they're not the ones with purple- streaked hair, emo shirts, and TEEN ANGST invisibly tattooed on their foreheads. We're talking 20ish, just barely leaving their teenage years behind, or the 30-and-uppish reliving what shenanigans they were up to in those bygone days.

Why do we prowl the YA section at the library, hoping our daughter's schoolmates won't see us snatching the last Twilight book off the shelf?

I'm sure there are varying reasons. Feel free to share if you want. I like YA because it wasn't that long ago for me when I went through the phase of "I'm SO MISUNDERSTOOD". I remember wanting acceptance. There's the thrill of growing and coming into your own. The future seemed so endless and full of possibilities and dreams. *Not saying we stop dreaming at 40, or 50, or even 80. We can always dream.*

The YA phase is of volatile emotions, of passion and recklessness, of feeling alive and learning lessons. It's waiting by the bus stop in the rain, hoping to catch a glimpse of that someone. It's falling down and getting back up again.

YA stories are inside of us.

Young Love
Photo by Boris SV

And now, here's an excerpt from a different WIP I had filed away in my desktop: Ashes for Skin. It's post-apocalyptic and YA, of course. I usually post excerpt from my current WIP Hidden, but I'm working on some scenes right now. This is the first page...enjoy.

*******

It is only when the fire starts to roar that I stop in the middle of the path to turn around. Black smoke swirls upward as high as the heavens go. Orange-red flames peek from my bedroom window and lick the fraying ends of the thatched roof. Ravenous inferno consuming everything once familiar to me: the paisley patterns on my father’s old chair, my bookcase littered with dog-eared books, the yellow flimsy curtains hanging by the kitchen window…. I can’t see them now, can’t see what the inside of the house looks like, but there’s enough memory to supply me the images in my mind.

Someone tugs at my hand, urging me to move. I don’t turn to look, don’t turn to see who has come to save me. There is no saving me. My soul is burning along with the house. Along with the woman flailing her arms through a hole the fire has made in the wall. Her mouth is wide open, her shrieks mingling with the cackling of the flames. Even through the haze I see her lips move, mouthing a word. My name.

Anna.

I watch her pleading for life even as the fire melts her skin. I shake my head at her and hold up my blistered hands. The smell of kerosene envelopes me, seeping through my pores. As if it’s trying to fuse with my blood. To stamp the color of hell inside my veins. To never let me forget how I killed the woman in the house. My own mother.

*******

Excerpt from my WIP "Hidden"

This passage is a little creepy. My MC has just survived a near drowning accident when she takes a plunge into the river. As I've mentioned before, she is a teenager diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder. It's similar to Schizophrenia, though they are not quite of the same vein. She's been plagued with hallucinations...or so she's been told.

This is from Chapter 6.

******

That night, I dream of the blue water lady.

I dream of her holding me in her lap, her arms surprisingly warm as she presses my head against her thin chest. Her eyes are blue like mine. We don’t say a word to each other.

Soon I feel her damp clothes soaking me. Moisture seeps into the pores of my skin. She clings to me, her grip tighter, afraid to let go. Her hair, once black, turns green with mold. Her eyes sink into their sockets. I push away from her but my arms are lifeless. They dangle from my shoulders like marionette limbs lacking strings.

The blue water lady opens her mouth. An expression of anguish. Of despair. She can’t speak. Her face begins to sag, a melting candle running down to form a shapeless glob. I scream and water gushes into my mouth. Bits and pieces of blue skin flaking away from her diminishing frame. No one can hear me. No one can save me.

She crumbles until there is nothing left of her. I am alone.

I wake up drenched in cold sweat. My sheets and pillows are damp, almost soaked through. Water trails from my bed, across the floorboards, and all the way to the window. There are wet footprints on the wooden floor.

I know now why she came for me. I sit on the edge of my bed and silently weep.

******

Excerpt from my WIP "Hidden"

My main character is a 16-year-old girl diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and psychotic depression after her father's death.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 3:

When did it start? When did I break? The memory doesn’t come to me.

Sometimes there are gaps where I don’t remember things. Like, how did my father die? I only know he died in my arms. Was it my fault? Did I hurt him? No, I wouldn’t ever do anything to harm him. He was my best friend. He was my everything.

My shrink, Dr. Peterson, once told me I have repressed memories. When trauma hits, our brains try to protect us by forgetting.

I don’t want to forget my Dad. I want to gather all the pieces, all the chunks of time and moments we spent together, and cradle them in my arms. His recipe for the perfect pot roast, the smell of popcorn and leather when we stayed up late watching the Star Trek marathon on the SyFy channel, and the way he shimmied to Saturday Night Fever while buttering his toast one Sunday morning when he thought no one was looking. I remember him listening patiently to my catastrophic rendition of Chopin’s Minute Waltz on the piano. I couldn’t follow the metronome. Dad took it down, threw it in the garbage, and said to me, “The thing’s crap. You don’t need it.” We went and got ice cream afterwards.

My pillow is wet now and the ticking in my head returns. The rhythm is off. It’s the sound of a broken metronome.

The sound of a broken heart.

********