So, you decide.
First is a contemporary romance. I’m calling it Macaroni Love-it makes me smile. The playlist for it is mostly Dean Martin. First is the first para of the first scene and the first para of the second scene.
1.
Three hours—that was how long it took Lucas Grant Gephardt to regret taking the job in Falconettoville. It was also the amount of time it took him to drive through a single cornfield on his way to the dust mote town in Pennsylvania. He might have thought it a coincidence, had he believed in them. No, this was fate telling him he just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Giovanna Serafina Carlotta Biancotto slapped another rice ball into the pan, not caring that it now looked like a mushroom cap instead of a baseball and flicked her middle finger to the ceiling, sending a blob of rice and egg onto the wall.
ORRRRR my dystopian alternative history with very strong romantic elements and–well, I can’t tell you about the hero. That’s a secret. Two starts-one in third, one in first. This playlist is lots of Enya and tribal drumming.
2.
Caoimhe first learned her name on the day her mother sold her. For twenty years no one spoke nor whispered it within her hearing. She surmised that was her mother’s intent. Names have power. They give a separate identity. Until that day, Caoimhe had been a her, or it… maybe she. A constant reminder that she was not her own, but an object owned by another. But twenty years could be changed in one day.
2.1
A groan escaped my lips as I lowered into a squat, my chains clattering onto the ground in front of me. What heaven it would be to lie down and close my burning eyes for a nap. But I didn’t know how long I would be kept waiting. Her reeking, corpulent customer had waddled into her tent about an hour ago, and if I had pence to bet, he would have been spent within two minutes if it weren’t for mother’s expertise. Which was why there was always another customer waiting in the shadows at the edge of our campfire.
For fun, here’s two more
3. Steampunk Pirates. Think Great Expectations.
“S’ payday,” the pig nosed cop announced. If he stood the right way you could see clear up his nostrils. He rested his shoulder against her store entrance, his whole frame taking up the small space.
“Good for you.” Keba Joy Melfincheck grabbed the door and went to shut it in the copper’s face. He slammed it back, pointed his baton at her and stepped into the room.
“Now, now, Keba. Ain’t we getting’ on better than this after all these years?” He rubbed at his crotch slowly, making sure she understood his intent.
Like she needed a reminder of what would happen if she refused to pay.
“You’re a sad sack of shit, Henry.” She’d pay him, she had no choice, but she didn’t have to like him and well he knew it. She reached into her apron, grabbed a fistful of coins and held out her hand. “You be stayin’ away from my Katie, you hear me? We made a deal. You don’t touch my girls.”
4. A reframed Fairy Tale-Patient Griselda.
Selda heard the foretelling waves crashing against the salmon granite shores long before the storm reached land. It would have been wise for her to ready the animals and house hours ago, but the loom needed to be strung for a new blanket, and she wanted to be done with it before nightfall. She worked the shutters closed upstairs, and raced to the barn to make sure the sheep and chickens were tucked in for the night. As she closed the barn door, the first fat raindrops hit her head, within seconds pouring down so hard the mud squished between her toes as she ran toward the porch.
“Seldie, come in now?”
“’Tis only a storm, my love,” Selda said, as she squinted, shielding her eyes from the rain as she looked out on the horizon where gray clouds met a grayer ocean. A gust blew up and she gripped the porch banister.
“Sheep snuggled, Seldie?”
Selda gazed through the screen door to her older sister, whose wrinkles belied her mind’s age. Kaethe’s brows were heavy and her dark, teardrop eyes peered out, taking in Selda’s every move.
And, just for pretty
All heirlooms, all organic. They should do well.
