Renewed Writing Passion
I know just a couple of days ago I was ready to throw in the writing towel, (forgive the cliche!) but I might have a new story passion. No, my current WIP is not yet edited, but I needed a break and this story kept bouncing around in my head. The characters kept talking to me…so I might need to tell their story yet.
Problem is, it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever written and it scares me. I’m not sure what it is, Women’s fiction, contemporary, but I never wanted to be labeled a mystery/suspense writer, though I love it and I know you have to zero in on a genre to keep readers, but I don’t have a contract yet, so I’m gonna play the field while I can. It might stink, but here’s the rough opening. What do yout think? Would you want to read more? Or should I stick to mystery/suspense writing?
Prologue
I remember the first time I found it…I found him. I didn’t know at that moment what it was, but the feeling grabbed hold of my heart and clung to it like sand to my wet body. It was more than a feeling really, but a knowing like after searching for hours in the sand and finally uncovering that one perfect seashell and realizing that the broken and damaged ones which might have once satisfied, now just wouldn’t do.
If I had known then what I know now I wouldn’t have waited so long to return.
Chapter One
Fire Island, NY 1975
“Take that back, Michael Chandler or I’ll sick this crab on you.” I held the tiny sand crab out as if it was a giant lobster. Not much of a threat since sand crabs didn’t have pinchers, but it was all that I had to defend myself. Heat scalded my seven-year-old head that early July, the ocean breeze whipping through my mousy-brown, sun-streaked hair.
Michael Chandler sat on his haunches, digging in the sand across from me. “Why should I take it back? It’s the truth, ain’t it?”
“It might be the truth, but it’s not nice.” Gabe, Michael’s identical twin in appearance only, pushed overgrown bangs out of his eyes with his sandy hand. “Jesus loves you just the way you are Hadley, freckles and all.”
Jesus. I’d heard the name before, shouted by my Jewish father, but never in the same sentence as the word love.
Michael looked up from his digging. “Why’d your parents give you a boy’s name? Haadleee. Saadlee. Makes me maadlee.”
“Is not a boy’s name. Ernest Hemingway’s first wife was named Hadley.” Mother said so. And she knew all about writers ’cause she’s one herself. That’s why we always spent our summers on Fire Island. So mother could write, and we could get away from the distractions of the world.
Michael snickered. “First wife? Figures. No girl with the name of Hadley could ever get a man to love her forever.”
I remember the feeling. How Michael’s words choked the air from my lungs, worse then when I tumbled through the surf, fighting the waves, grasping to find my way to the surface. I fought back tears. I wouldn’t let Michael Chandler see me cry. Not ever.
Gabe put his sandy hand around my shoulder. “I like the name Hadley. It’s pretty and different. Reminds me how God made all of us unique and loves us no matter what other people say.”
And in that moment I remember feeling as if God was hugging me, that he had reached his big God arms down inside a skinny boys’ body and gave me a tight, fatherly squeeze.
Sitting on the
