Teaser Tuesday: Oh Those Crazy Writers

Hello, all! I am quite swamped, and must be getting back to my small mountain of homework - so you know what that means? You get a Teaser Tuesday today!

This is another snippet from Smoke and Mirrors, which I wish I had more time to work on, but, ah well, such is life. In it, Theo and Josephine go to visit a scholar whose essay has gotten Theo all confused. He's hoping to find out that his suspicions have been only that, but, well... we don't always get what we wish for.

Enjoy!

-----------------

“Forgive me for intruding, Mr. Atwood-Berkley-”

“Nonsense. Reynolds never lets anyone in to see me, it’s getting rather ridiculous.”

His wide, fixed grin was beginning to make Theo uncomfortable, and he felt Josephine shift uncomfortably beside him. He repeated his faltering introduction of himself, this time including Josephine. She dipped a short, brief curtsey. 

“Ah, excellent, excellent. Do sit down. Reynolds! Bring us some tea, that’s a good chap.” 

The butler bowed, a gesture that made him look as though he was two fixed pieces on a hinge, his torso remaining quite straight throughout the quick bob. Theo and Josephine seated themselves on a sofa near Atwood-Berkley, the feather cushions very much deflated. Theo settled his bowler hat on his knee, Reynolds having apparently forgotten to take it when they entered the house. Perhaps he was not quite as good a butler as his demeanour suggested, or perhaps he was not expecting their visit to be of long duration. True, the entire thing was making him uncomfortable – the fact that he was still sinking into the sofa as though it wanted to trap him did not help – but nothing so far suggested that there was anything wrong. He struggled to match the writer’s unnerving grin, hoping very much to find his suspicions proven wrong. 

“I’ve been working on a thesis about practical applications of magic,” he began. “My professor gave me one of your articles-”

“Ah, yes, he would at that. He is quite fond of my theories. It’s odd that no one else is, I haven’t been able to publish for months. What do you make of that, then?” 

“I – I find it all very strange. You seem to suggest in the article I was given that illusory magic could be made corporeal-”

“Oh, well, yes, of course it can. Rothfeldt and I came to that conclusion years ago.”

For a moment, all Theo could do was stare at him. He could not be serious. He could not smile brightly at him and calmly deliver such a statement. It simply was not possible. 

“But – surely that is impossible-”

 “Nothing is impossible. Difficult, maybe, but not impossible. Reynolds, there you are. Won’t you show them?” 

The butler had returned with a tray of tea things. The man paused, but then set down the tray and moved closer to where Theo and Josephine sat. He rubbed at something with his foot, something on the floor that Theo could not see. And then Josephine yelped. Before he knew what had happened, he had fallen to the ground, with his sister sprawled there beside him, and the sofa they had been sitting on was gone. It had vanished, leaving nothing in its wake, not even a solitary goose feather. 

“There, you see? Not at all impossible.”

Teaser Tuesday: Not as it Seems

Hello, lovely blog readers! It's been rather a while since my last Teaser Tuesday, so I thought I'd share another snippet of my wip, Smoke and Mirrors, with you.

Some background info: Kate is finding India to be rather less adventurous and rather more hot than she had ancitipated; Clara is talking even less than usual, and so Kate is bored. Also, magic exists in this world, but only as illusions.

I hope you like it!

---------------------------------------------------------

“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to read lying about, do you?” she asked, turning to face her sister at last. 

Clara shook her head, not taking her eyes off the orderly black lines and dots of her sheet music. A conversation, it seemed, was out of the question. Clara had been awfully tense ever since arriving in India, and it was beginning to frustrate Kate. If Clara was more taciturn than usual, then she really had no one at all to talk to during these long afternoons. 

But she was not quite cross enough yet to bring it up, and so she wandered out of the library and ventured off through the house, not looking for anything in particular. She wandered through the parlour and the dining room, glancing at each end table she passed for the sign of a book that someone might have left unattended, but all she found were elephant statuettes and table linens and a surprisingly large cadre of Indian servants. Most she passed in hallways or outside the half-hidden passages to the servants’ quarters, and they seemed not to be doing anything at all. Perhaps that was how they dealt with the positively oppressive heat. She interrupted one in the breakfast room, polishing glassware. The man, who wore a blue turban and a very impressive white beard, bowed as soon as she entered the room. 

“Forgive me, Kumaari,” he said, making to exit the room. 

“Oh, no, please don’t trouble yourself. I’ll be on my way in a moment,” Kate said, flashing him a smile. The old man paused a moment, but then he returned to his work as Kate circled the room once, in search of something interesting. All she found was a dusty painting of a gentleman she didn’t know and a few discarded newspapers left on her father’s chair. She lingered over these for a moment – the articles left on top detailed increasing tensions with Russia, and a strange magical kerfluffle in London. Neither made any immediate logical sense, and so she left them behind, waving to the old servant as she left. He gave her a tentative smile and she saw that he was missing a tooth or two. She wondered if Rajesh might help him work on his English a bit; his accent had been so thick she’d hardly known what he had said. 

The ground floor of the house had given her nothing near exciting enough, and so she flounced her way up the stairs. The room she shared with Clara was wildly uninteresting, so she passed it by and continued down the hallway. Unexpectedly, the door to her father’s study was ajar. She did not hesitate a moment before slipping inside. 

There were more bookshelves inside the dark room, and she gravitated immediately towards them, but there were fewer books here than downstairs and they were nearly all military histories. She sighed again and turned her attention to her father’s large desk. There were more books and a globe set to one side, and the centre of the desk was strewn with letters – old letters, she realized quickly, from her mother. She scanned the first page for her name or Clara’s, but there was no immediate mention of them and so she turned aside. 

She circled the desk again and saw another statuette that had been mostly hidden by the globe a moment ago. It was, for once, not an elephant, but instead a little gilded lion. She suspected it was meant to be a symbol of English heroism, but she thought its face conveyed more gentleness than fierceness. The carving was very detailed, showing every curl of the lion’s mane. She smiled, wondering how she could ask her father about it without revealing that she’d been in his study without permission. She reached out to stroke it, expecting to feel gilt paint over wood. 

Instead, the little lion disappeared completely.   

Teaser Tuesday: Arrival

Hello, all! It's time for another teaser, don't you think?

This is Kate's first impression of Bombay, before she and Clara are reunited with their father. Kate, of course, being rather excitable, thinks everything is fabulous. Now, for whatever reason, late 19th century Bombay is proving incredibly difficult to research. I'm working on it - I've got a list of books I need to go ask my librarian to hunt down for me - but if anyone is knowledgeable about that sort of thing and sees any glaring errors, please let me know! I'm trying very hard not to fall back on stereotypes, so, please do correct me.

Other than that, enjoy!

--------------------------------------

May 1878

            Their arrival in Bombay was accompanied by an enormous amount of confusion. They nearly lost their luggage in the descent from the steam ship to the docks, and Uncle Charles and Frederick nearly vanished into the crowd in their search for a porter. And then there was the strange, bouncing journey in a carriage contraption pulled by a man in an immaculately white turban through the teeming streets that led away from the port. The buildings they passed were mainly European in design, as this was the neighbourhood the Portuguese and the English had taken as their own, but it was certainly dissimilar to England. It was as though someone had turned a bright lamp on the streets of London and splashed at it with brightly coloured paints. Everywhere there were strange items piled upon market stalls or baskets; everywhere there were bizarre smells, some enticing, some repulsive; everywhere there was shouting in languages that were neither remotely familiar or decipherable. Uncle Charles and Frederick were glancing about at the streets with apprehension, already pulling at their cravats in the heat, looking as though they expected to be ambushed by savage natives at any second. Clara watched the whole thing with her usual calm face, although her eyes were wide and excited as she surveyed the scene.

            Kate loved every second of it. 

            She asked a thousand questions, pointing at anything and everything over the edge of the carriage’s open box, and for once she did not care that the answer to her questions was not forthcoming. She tried her best to remember the turns they took from the water’s edge to the Churchgate neighbourhood, tried to remember what they passed in order to take stock of her new city. While the turns were few, however, the streets were so mobbed with people – and Kate’s head buzzing with such excitement – that she could scarce remember anything half a minute later as she exclaimed over the newest thing she caught sight of. 

            It was an odd place, so unlike London in its cold, rain-washed grey suit. Bombay had the same smell of a large city, which eased as they came further away from the docks, but everything here was baked under the Indian sun, intensified and spread, but while Kate had initially found the smell of overwarm bodies and sun baked fish and refuse lying in the streets unpleasant, the further they were removed from the docks, the more it was masked by spicier scents, strange things she could not name. There were what seemed hundreds of people passing them by every instant – the men’s long shirts bright splashes of white against the dazzling colours of the city. Many wore turbans in many different colours, and some had short caps that sat squarely atop their heads. The women they passed seemed to be wearing every shade of fabric imaginable, and so much of it was so elegantly embroidered that Kate found herself staring at the patterns before their carriage whisked them past.

Teaser Tuesday: Oppressive Silence

Happy Tuesday, all! I'm trying something new with this snippet - let me know if it's obvious enough for you to pick up and if you like it! (See, I give you riddles on the blog now. Muahaha. (Not really.))

I think this is pretty self explanatory, so, I'll let you jump right in. Enjoy!

--------------------------------------

At last, however, it is time for Penelope and Celeste to return home, as of course they must. Josephine escorts her friends to the door, and once Celeste’s family carriage has pulled up to the door, collected Celeste and driven away, Penny surprises her with an impossible request. 

            “Josephine, you must promise me to come to something this season. Some party or dance, somewhere. Please. It can be so lonely when Celeste is off with all of her admirers.”

            “Penny,” Josephine stammers, “you know I cannot-”

            “I know you have your obligations at home. I wouldn't wish for you to neglect them. But you deserve a season of your own, you know. I know you must be dreadfully lonely in this house. Please, promise me you will at least ask to join us.” 

            Josephine’s mouth hangs open a moment in a very unladylike fashion as she tries to find the right words. Penny is staring up at her, her brown eyes wide and almost pleading; it is a kind of desperation for companionship that Josephine knows only too well, and she finds it impossible to say no. 

            “All right, Penny. I will ask. I promise. I can’t promise to do anything more, though. I’m sorry.”

            But Penelope’s smile is so bright that Josephine cannot help but smile back, even though she is torn between happiness at delighting her friend so, and mounting worry at abandoning her duties to her mother. The promise has been made, however, and all that is left is to carry it out. 

            Later that day, Josephine sits in the parlour again, embroidering a cushion while her mother and grandmother read by the fire. The room is nearly silent now, aside from the crackle of the fire that had been built to keep her mother from catching a chill. It is the same parlour that Josephine had spent so many enjoyable hours in earlier. The fine pink-and-white striped silk and cherry wood of the chairs is the same. The same dusky rose armchairs face the fireplace, with the same brass buttons now glinting in the flickering firelight. The same round tea table is covered with the same delicate lace tablecloth, although the tea things have long since been cleared away. 

            But in spite of the innumerable similarities, to Josephine, it feels like a completely different room. No laughter is filling it and making it seem less empty. There is no gentle chattering to coerce her into thinking that the wallpapered walls are not impossibly long, that the carved ceiling is not impossibly far away – that the room itself is not a neatly decorated cavern, filled with only echoes of voices that have long since fallen silent. In spite of the fact that there is a fire burning now when there had not been before, it is now when Josephine feels cold. 

            She stabs her needle in and out of the fabric, trailing green thread along after each neat stitch, looking up at the pair sitting by the fire every few minutes and wondering if she dares to interrupt the silence. After all, she did promise Penelope to ask. 

            The question burns on her tongue for hours, but in spite of the ache it causes, Josephine does not make a sound. 

Teaser Tuesday + Tags = Double Time!

I know, I know, I failed a little on the alliteration there... bear with me, I'm a writer, not a poet.

But! The lovely and talented Ari, she of the fellow-interning, Nerdfighting, and snarking characters fame, tagged me the other day, and I thought I ought to play along. :)

The Lucky 7 Meme Award Rules are as such:
1. Go to the 7th or 77th page of your work in progress.
2. Go to the 7th line of the page.
3. Copy the next 7 sentences or paragraphs. Remember, they must be as they are typed.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know they’re it!


Now, I'm going to cheat a little and not tag people, because I'm still recovering my blog-reading habits from the Blindingly-Slow-Internet-to-Crashed-Hard-Drive-to-Lost-Bookmarks Debacle of 2012, so to be perfectly honest I'm not sure which of you fine readers to tag. (Bonus: freebie excuse to send me the link to your blog so I can add it to my bookmarks again! Go go go!)

Instead, I will give you TWO snippets, as this is both a Teaser Tuesday and a tag post. Woo!

First, a piece from page 77 of the MS that is currently riding the query-go-round, A Terror of Darkness: 

“Where have you been?” Avar snapped, still gripping her hard by the shoulders.

            Rose raised an eyebrow; he was seething at her, absolutely furious, but his eyes looked – frightened. 

            “I would not have thought you cared,” she replied quietly. 

            “You promised to help me get them out of Paris,” he said, gesturing sharply at the grate and the three other wolves who waited in the camp for them. “If you disappear, so does my only chance to escape this place. You said so yourself – you need me, I need you. Where have you been?”

            “I went to the Conciergerie-”

            “Again? Why? Rose, if you are seen there too often someone will notice-”

            “I was befriending a guard,” she told him. “I cannot get into the prison through strength of arms or stealth, so I am going to try to be invited inside.”

 
And next, a piece from my new wip - this one's from page 7, since I think I'm only on page 13 so far!

            “Many of those stories are merely hearsay and idle gossip, not anything upon which to base a serious field of study.”  

            “Josephine, might I trouble you for another cup of tea?” 

            Everyone except Kate jumped at the sound of Clara’s voice. Grandmamma looked especially startled; it was quite likely that it had been so long since she had heard Clara speak that she had quite forgotten her capable of it in the slightest. But when Josephine turned to Clara, her sister did not look at all perturbed by the attention she had suddenly turned upon her; on the contrary, she was smiling calmly, holding out her cup and reminding Josephine to perform her duties as hostess and fill it once more. Josephine smiled back, pressing her sister’s hand warmly as she took the cup and saucer from her. 

And hey, if you want to copy this meme and play with it on your own blog, go right ahead! Do please send me the link, as well! 

Teaser Tuesday: A Shiny New Idea

So last night at about two in the morning I had this idea. And I was a good person, for once, and wrote it down instead of pretending I'd remember it in the morning so I could go back to sleep. I've been working on that idea all day, and guys, I'm pretty excited about it. I don't want to say too much in case this project fizzles out on me, but so far I like it.

The story, very tentatively titled Smoke and Mirrors (I know, it's terribly original. Perhaps the one thing that John Green and I have in common as writers is that we both find titles kind of impossible), is going to be told through at least four different points of view, the four siblings of the Marks family, and will take place in London and in Bombay (cue research!!).

Here's the opening two pages; I hope you guys like it! Please let me know what you think of it so far.

----------------------------------------

May 1878

London, England

            When Josephine Marks entered her sisters’ bedchamber, bright sunlight was streaming through both of the windows, in spite of the fact that every other window in the house displayed the typical dreary London rain. 

            “Kate,” she called, stepping through the doorframe and at once wishing she had not. 

            The room – or, at least half the room, including the half that now blocked Josephine’s path – looked rather as though it had been torn to pieces by an overeager dog or a particularly violent windstorm. Books littered the wood floors and hid the green, red and brown swirls of the Persian carpet. Clothes had been taken out from one of the tall, carved wardrobes and dumped unceremoniously onto one of the four-poster beds or thrown half-heartedly into one of the many steamer trunks crowding the room. The other four-poster, surrounded by a swath of uncluttered carpet, had things piled upon it as well, but these books were left in orderly rows, and clothes was neatly folded into an open steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. Those neat stacks were greatly in contrast with the piles of hair ribbons and sashes and bonnets that tumbled down from the bed opposite and spilt all across the floor.

            All this was strewn about, and yet there was no sign of the two sixteen year old girls who inhabited the room. 

            “Kate?” Josephine said again, stepping carefully around an atlas, opened, of course, to maps of India. “Kate, do come out from wherever it is you are hiding. Grandmamma has been wanting you this last half hour.” 

            There was still no response. Then again, Kate was well aware that an interview with Grandmamma was sure to cause more than a few fireworks. But Josephine was not about to retreat without what she had come for, so she changed tactics.

            “Clara?” 

            Still stepping over the things that Kate had thrown willy-nilly about the room, Josephine looked behind an open wardrobe door and pulled aside the neatly hanging curtains around Clara’s bed, but discovered no giggling sisters. 

            “Clara, dearest, do please come out.” 

            But of course, there was no reply from the neater and nearly always silent twin. She had hoped that perhaps Clara could be prevailed upon to give up the game first, but as always, the two were steadfastly together in whatever mischief they were up to this time. 

            It was then that Josephine tripped over a boot that had been left lying on the ground. She almost fell herself, catching herself on the lid of a steamer trunk, but she could clearly hear Kate giggling from wherever it was that she was hiding. 

            “Katherine Georgiana Marks, if you do not show yourself this instant, I shall tell Mamma and you shall have to give up magic from now till Michaelmas.” 

            “Oh, Josy, do be reasonable. It was just a bit of fun.” 

            Josephine blinked, and suddenly there were two girls right in front of her, sitting cross-legged with their skirts pooled about their knees in the small empty space between the two beds. Clara, at least, had the decency to look apologetic.