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11.27.2016
Excerpt/blurb from your next unpublished chapter/book
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For #nanowrimo2016, I managed, despite many life interruptions, to get a jumpstart on the gothic horror novella that's been cooking in my brain for awhile. I have yet to finish it, not for lack of planning (because I actually outlined every scene), but because of other projects under construction that have/had real deadlines.
Anyone who follows me on Instagram (user: lilbookfiend) might remember me posting this:
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Silence of Grindal House is the story of an assistant printer living in New England, whose mother dies and tasks him, her only son, with taking family revenge on the vampire Lady Steel for stealing his father away fifteen years earlier. His target: Lady Steel's ward, Silence Steel.
I'm terrible at blurbs, but that's the bare bones of it. Rest assured there is plenty of murder and mayhem, horrible hotel rooms and a human butchery; all accompanied by cravats and fancy tea cups and tied up nicely with a secrets-bow.
For this challenge, here is a raw, unedited glimpse at the very opening of Silence of Grindal House:
Padstow, New England
October 13, 1825
The sky was a harsh gray, stained through and through with bleak ink, shaped into clouds that laid low over the harbor. Masts - sails wrapped tight against the weather - lulled gently on the soft tide, nodding off while they waited for their men in warm taverns to emerge in the morning, blood-shot and surly. In town and all about, rain, mizzling and cold, soaked the porous roof shingles and every wool coat caught in the close-knit streets. The stark houses, in their dark purples and blues, huddled together on old feet, passing the years in unaltered style; sturdy siding, right-angled windows on flat faces, crumbling foundations clinging to the land as it sloped toward the sea, drawn alongside the tide by the moon. The day was dreary. And tomorrow smelled no better. And if I had my way (which I never did) I'd have stayed inside by the fire, reading my book, and letting the smoke from the chimney do my venturing for me. But there was a letter in my pocket that burnt through my waking hours and spoiled my dreams, and who in answer to, an appointment had been set. An appointment that weighed on me like a kedge anchor on the ocean floor.
I walked brisk. Hands in my coat pockets, my collar turned high. The thick soles on my boots grappled with the slick cobbles as I took the Main Street incline in long strides. I had the legs for it, my mother used to say, and I put them to good use, buckling against the spitting sky and the gloom pervading me until I reached the top. If I turned around, a spectacular view of Cadge Cove might have distracted me a moment, but I didn't. I knew the sight - not just the clustered houses sliding into the sea wall, but the stretch of soggy beach below dotted here about with mounds of russet seaweed like a hundred, giants heads cut off and planted for the seagulls and turns to pick at. Beyond that, ships bobbed. Beyond them, you could see the world. A band of slate horizon was broken up around a modest, rocky, island named after some man no one could remember now.
I have accomplished 15,000 words so far. I hope, when it's all done, that it will be about 45,000. One more thing to add to the list in 2017!
I do have a mood board for this novella, find it on Pinterest (username: prosepunk).
