October 5, 2012 – Suddenly they all died. The end.

Once again, I’m in the mood for sharing. I’ve just finished the second chapter of my WIP. Yay! Assuming my brain thaws out sometime tonight, I’ll be able to start working on Chapter Three in the morning. There are still some important things I need to figure out and some major kinks that need ironing, but I’m still at the point where I’m just having fun and not majorly stressing.

Meanwhile, may I present a snippet from Chapter Two:

“Darling, wake up. We’ve reached the Briants’.”

Maria slowly opened her eyes. Every other time she had visited, Michael’s house had been friendly and welcoming. Cozy, even. His house, his family, was the exact opposite of hers in so many ways and she drank in the warmth and sense of belonging she felt here like a starving man set loose on an all-you-can-eat buffet.

But now, for the first time, she felt none of those things. As she stared at the front door and thought about what she had to tell Mr. and Mrs. Briant, a deep and abiding sense of dread quickly overwhelmed her.

When I was five years old, my mother cut my hair. Well, she didn’t do it, she took me downtown to the Hair Clinic and had Angie cut my hair. The point is, prior to the age of five, I looked like a girl. When I started kindergarten, though, I looked like a boy. The pictures of me on my very first day of school are about the only pictures of me in existence that look like pictures of my kids. Several of my old teachers are still teaching at my old elementary school, where Tadpole and Tomcat now attend classes, and they’ve said more than once how much Tomcat resembles me. I vehemently disagree with this, as he is the spittin’ image of his father and the older he gets, the more he looks like him. But, at the age of five, with hair so short I couldn’t even put barrettes in it, we looked a little bit a like.

My first day of school. I was so excited!

There were two girls in my class who had hair long enough that it reached their waist. Oh, how I envied their hair! One girl’s was dark blonde; the other girl’s was red. Every day they came to school with their hair in barrettes or ponytails or braids and every day I envied their ability to change their hairdo at a moment’s notice.