Today, I’ll be sharing one of my favorite scenes in my own work. Sometimes when I write a scene I fall in love with it. That doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s great. This scene comes from Flood which I wrote because I love dogs. I had to make myself choose a reasonable short excerpt for today because I really like all the tension in the last part of the book. In this excerpt my heroine, Aria, and her mother, Clariee have entered a raging flood zone to try to rescue dogs held in a dog fighting ring. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, but Aria is a vet who loves animals. First a blurb, and then an excerpt.
Blurb:
Drawn together by their love of animals, Aria De Luca and Caleb Hawkins burn for each other. They never suspected that malignant forces around them were successfully plotting Caleb’s ruin from the moment he entered her life. When the flood of a century strikes Aria’s hometown, an alienated Caleb is all that stands between her and catastrophic loss.
Excerpt:
How are we going to get the dogs out of here?”
“They’ll have to follow us. We can’t carry them.”
“Hurry.” Clariee shoved her wet hair behind her ear. “The water’s up to their necks now. You go to the top of the ladder to pull them up while I push from behind.”
With lots of pushing, pulling, and grunting, they got the dogs out of the cellar and into the kitchen. “Come on up,” Aria yelled. “We have to go now.”
“Comin….”
A shriek that seemed to go on forever drowned out her mother’s voice. Frozen with fear, Aria saw the metal shelves wrench away from the wall and knock her mother to the floor. “Mama!”
Aria slid down the ladder and pulled at the shelving unit, but it wouldn’t budge. “Mama, Mama, where are you?” she sobbed.
“Over here. In the corner.” By nothing short of a miracle, Clairee’s face was still above the rising water. “I’ll push, you pull,” she panted.
Aria pulled until she felt like every blood vessel in her face was popping, but the shelves wouldn’t budge. Clairee groped for her hand. “It’s no use, Aria. They’re too heavy, and I think something is wrong with my leg. It hurts pretty bad.” She attempted a smile. “Save the dogs. If you leave now, you can still do that, and there’s absolutely no use in both of us dying here.”
Flood is available at Amazon if you’re interested.
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