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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Snippet Sunday and Weekend Writing Warriors: Return Engagement

Welcome to Snippet Sunday and Weekend Writing Warriors, your chance to sample the work of a talented group of authors. When you finish here you can find more snippets at:

http://www.wewriwa.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/SnippetSunday/

So far in my excerpts from Return Engagement my hero and heroine met on a beach ten years after his father broke them up. They find that all of their old feelings are still there even though she's engaged to another man. They've gone to a carnival together, and now they're walking back down the beach to their cars. He just gave her his jacket to wear and said he liked the idea of her wearing his clothes, like in high school.  They sat down on the sand to watch the moon, and both of them spoke at once. Elizabeth told him to speak first, and he told her she didn't really love her fiancĂ© or she wouldn't have been flirting with and kissing him. Elizabeth just told him she can't stand it if he walks away again, and he tells her that it's taken 10 years, but they're back where they belong: together. Last week he asked to go home with her, and she said no. Today, I'd like to focus a little on Elizabeth and her background. We may come back to the place where we left off last week.


She didn’t come from money the way Richard did. Mentally, she pictured the small, two bedroom home where she had grown up. The house had originally been white, but Elizabeth had lived there for nineteen years, and they hadn’t painted it even once. By the time she and her mother came to Hollywood, most of the peeling paint had finally flaked off, leaving the weathered, gray boards exposed to the elements.

The inside matched the exterior: old, faded, and dirty looking no matter how much she and her mother tried to clean it. It had mice too. They never had any food to waste, so they constantly fought the little pests. She vividly remembered the day she found a mouse in the sack of dried beans her mother planned to cook for dinner. Sadly, her mother had thrown the bag away. For the next two nights they’d had nothing but sliced loaf bread smeared with margarine for dinner. 

16 comments:

  1. This is an effective depiction of poverty. Nasty old mice! Personally, I probably would've washed out the droppings and eaten the beans anyway, but your back story hints at a touch of nicety I wouldn't possess.

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  2. That definitely puts into perspective the motivations behind both her and her mother, especially with regard to men. Great snippet, Elaine.

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  3. I'm with Ed, good description of the house, and how she lived. I could picture it clearly. Hey, BTW, your address to wewriwa, doesn't link back. Could you fix that and make it a live link? That would be greatly appreciated.

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  4. Something about her attracted him. She must have gone on to school and made a better life for herself or am I writing a new book?

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  5. She became an A list Hollywood actress, Charmaine.





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  6. Like Ed, I'm not so sure I wouldn't have scrubbed me some dried beans to salvage them, but the thought makes me squirm. Nice job dropping me right in those shoes, getting me to think about what life would be like that way. Great snippet.

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  7. Love the comparison of the house inside and out to their lives. Really hits the heart.

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  8. Really an excellent excerpt, contrasting the exterior and the interior of the house, mice and all was so effective.

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  9. Really, really good. I could picture the house, the sadness and underlying shame of not having enough to eat.

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  10. You can feel their pain--so much effort, and still the world keeps kicking them.

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  11. Very poignant background info her, significant and nicely done

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  12. Great prose here. It adds a lot to the reader's understanding of who she is.

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  13. I'm not sure they are a good match. She has demons to fight that he has no clue about.

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  14. Great description of the house.

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  15. Wow... Amazing descriptions and setting of how she grew up. Nicely done.

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