Posted in books, Vampires, writing

Lucky 7

Posted on by D. D. Syrdal

I’ve been tagged in another meme, the Lucky 7, by Ben over at Story Multiverse.

lucky7

The rules for this one are:

1. Go to page 77 of your current WIP

2. Count down 7 lines

3. Copy and paste the next 7 lines, sentences or paragraphs

4. Nominate 7 other bloggers to join the fun.

Well, after the last meme I tagged people in fell flat, I’m not going to pass it on directly to anyone, but will invite anyone who’d care to participate to go ahead and play along, and let me know by leaving a comment below. As Ben pointed out, this one is specifically for bloggers who have completed a novel-length work, or have one in the works. I mean, you need to have finished at least 77 pages, right? Not exactly a short story.

So, my neglected WIP, Revenants Abroad, is what I’m pulling my excerpt of 7 not-so-glorious paragraphs from. For those who’ve read some of it, this is Anne-Marie and Andrej on a day out in Prague.

“This is all your history, your roots. You grew up with all this around you, part of you. It must be good to feel like you really belong somewhere.”

Andrej didn’t answer, but it was what drew him back to Prague, again and again. He felt strongest, steadiest here, despite everything. “You ready to head out? I could use a smoke,” he said.

“Hey, how about getting something to eat? I just realized I haven’t eaten yet today,” Anne-Marie said. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon.

“Didn’t you just eat something yesterday? Good thing I don’t have to eat that often.”

She gave him her sour look again. He smiled and shrugged, putting his arm around her waist. She snuggled into his side, enjoying the moment for whatever it was worth.

“You doing ok?” he asked.

“I don’t know, this is way worse than usual.” It was obvious she was starting to succumb to his charms, even knowing that it was because he was manipulating her moods. As the day went on she had found it increasingly hard to keep her wits and some perspective on the situation. She was starting to feel like she was going under in rough surf, battered by wave after wave, unable to break the surface to get air and make it to shore.

Well, there it is. Still a little rough, needs some elbow grease I think. But eh, it’ll get there.

So, who wants to play?

Author:

Writer of vampire stories and science fiction. First novel, "Revenants Abroad", available now at Amazon. If you like a vampire you can go out drinking with and still respect yourself in the morning, I think you'd like Andrej.

12 thoughts on “Lucky 7”

    1. Thanks, Ben. As it turned out this was a less-interesting section (to me, anyway) than some of the rest of it. Oh well, I’m still editing, lots is sure to change along the way. 🙂

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  2. I’ve been waiting to read more! Thanks for sharing, DD. 🙂

    I’m sorry to say I can’t play along, though. I have a hard time discussing, let alone sharing my work until it’s done. While I know others enjoy the energy they receive from getting feedback during the process.

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    1. I totally understand that. I’m kind of hesitant to share much of it, especially since it’s all still pretty rough. A lot of people on Twitter continually tweet lines from their WIPs, but I can’t bring myself to do that.

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  3. I don’t have 77 pages :(, so I went to my page 7:

    Ok, so there was HiPro, Sedona, sunshine/twilight, and then that healthful but tedious “eating plan” (“it’s not a diet. I’ve learned that diets don’t work. It’s a way of living, of really thinking about what you put in your body,”) – Careful, now, focus on the boring diets or you’ll get mad again and won’t sleep for two days –
    HiPro, Sedona, sunshine/twilight, and then the eating plan that wouldn’t be half bad if it didn’t assume that people are too stupid to know a diet when they see one, and don’t realize that all those point values they assign to everything is just a dumbed-down way of quantifying the number of calories you take in versus the number you burn off. At this point, I try to remember the point values of every goddamn thing Randi ever passed judgment on, and I doze off before I even get to the plan she tried to get Matt to pay for while they were engaged, which involved little prepackaged meals that arrived at the house once a week by UPS, individually wrapped in cardboard and plastic.

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      1. This is something I’ve been kicking around forever, but I have more of it done in my head than on the page. In that paragraph, my protagonist is having trouble sleeping, so instead of counting sheep she is counting the number of stupid diets that an annoying acquaintance of hers has bored everyone with over the years -she wears people out with all the annoying minutae while remaining basically the same weight.

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  4. Now I want to read more! 🙂 I was tagged in this meme too, but haven’t acted on it yet. I had just been through two rounds of other memes, and felt overwhelmed with it all. Also wasn’t sure if I wanted to post lines from my WIP, but looking at your excerpt, perhaps it’s a good idea.

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  5. Thanks, Chris. 🙂 That’s why I didn’t specifically ‘tag’ anyone for this one, most people don’t seem to want to be bothered.

    Posting part of a WIP is very personal. Not everyone feels comfortable with it. I’ve just reached the point where I don’t actually believe it’ll ever be published so I figure there’s no harm. I do have a couple more snippets under the “Fiction” tab, and did a ‘character interview’ here, if you want to read it. That was actually a lot of fun to write.

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