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Category: Six Sentence Sunday

Six Sentence Sunday 2/12/2012

Another Six Sentence Sunday is upon us! I recently got a really great 5-star review on The Redheaded Stepchild from a friend of mine who’s not much of a literary fiction fan, and when I asked her what her favorite part was, she mentioned she really enjoyed the chapter where Cady O’Donnell, the protagonist, is 13 years old, spending her court-mandated summer with mom. Thanks for the review, Shannon – this six is for you (and from your favorite chapter)!

I half-walked, half-ran outside into the street, almost tripping over a brick that had been forced up by the roots of the big elm tree in the front yard.  I looked both ways as I ran across so I could be on the same side as oncoming traffic.  I stuck my thumb out, walking ahead with a quick, steady pace.  I had walked about 10 yards when a white hatchback Toyota Tercel with two Hispanic-looking men slowed to a stop beside me.

“Need a ride?” the one in the passenger’s seat said, obviously not sensing my urgency.  Of course I needed a ride; why else would I be risking my life trying to hitchhike out in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska?

Thanks for reading! Feel free to tell me what you think (come on now, it takes five frakking seconds), pull out the 4 bucks to read the whole thing (available HERE), and whatever you do, check out the other talented authors sharing their excerpts on www.SixSunday.com!

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Six Sentence Sunday 2/5/2012

It’s time once again for Six Sentence Sunday. Today’s six is from my newest project, a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos.

Erica nearly slipped on the floor as she heard her phone ring, the familiar tingle of fear collecting at the base of her spine and slowly crawling its way up, blocking the neural impulses that were trying to tell her to take the call. She slowly stepped toward it, breathing a sigh of relief as soon as she saw the call was just her husband, Tim, who was in Taiwan on business.  She felt the muscles in her back relax, the tension draining out slowly as she pressed the Talk button.

Erica had had the unnatural fear of the phone ringing ever since her father’s death four years ago.  She had been at work, her first grown-up job out of college, where she had to make calls all day for a market research firm.  She’d just finished consoling her cubicle mate, Megan, who’d just been yelled at by a customer who insisted she was the devil.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check out all the other talented peeps over at www.SixSunday.com!

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/22/2012

Sorry for the delay, folks. The last 2 Windows updates have rendered my computer completely useless. But no matter; better late than never.

Today’s six comes from my new project, a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos, whose working title is now “Vodka Chicken Soup for the Tattoed Soul.”

From the chapter: MEGAN’S BLACK ROSE

She hated the green bean casserole the most.  As she opened a can of three-for-a-dollar grocery store brand cream of mushroom soup, Megan tried to ignore the smell of the French’s onion straws that invaded her nostrils, polluting the delicious mix of smells from the rest of Thanksgiving dinner – the rising dinner rolls, the brining turkey, the sage-y stuffing.  She thought green bean casserole was disgusting, and couldn’t think of why anyone would want to eat it, but for some reason it didn’t smell as bad this year as it had in past years, ever since she and her mother had made a tradition of overtaking the Thanksgiving meal and keeping it just within their immediate family.  She figured it was because green bean casserole was her baby brother Nathan’s favorite, and this was the first year that Nathan would be home for Thanksgiving in eight years.

Megan and her mother were the solitary females in a household that was otherwise overrun with testosterone.  She’d grown up with three brothers who’d made her childhood a girl’s hell, cracking the chickens’ eggs over her skull behind their parents’ back, melting her Barbie collection into a plastic mass they later called a sculpture, using her loose face powder to create fart clouds.

Stay tuned for more, and be sure to check out all the talented Six Sentence Sunday peeps at www.sixsunday.com!

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/15/2012

Here’s another six-sentence excerpt from my debut novel The Redheaded Stepchild. This is from the last chapter, where Cady finally comes to terms with the fact that her ex-step-mother is exactly that. In this scene, she runs into her ex-step-mother at one of her best friends’ wedding. Or rather, the ex runs into her…

Adrian reached the bottom and adjusted himself as he rushed to the bathroom with a cocky swagger.  Katrina’s big black chunky shoe caught on the edge of one of the gray-carpeted steps.  I watched her expression change to fear as she began to tumble down the stairs one by one.  The staircase was narrow, yet she managed to fall down the entire lower half of the staircase, moaning in pain with every descending step.  My heart sank as I knew she would be forced to sit at my table since it was the closest to the bottom of the stairs.  She tried to stand.

Be sure to check out all the other talented Six Sentence Sunday authors at www.sixsunday.com!

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/8/2012

First Six Sentence Sunday of the year and I already managed to enter my name wrong on the form. Brilliant.

Anyway, here’s today’s six, from my novel The Redheaded Stepchild (available on Amazon).

“It’s about time you showed up,” I said as Johnny half walked, half-fell through the door of Kinko’s, ducking to avoid bumping his head.  He had huge dark circles under his deep set hazel eyes and he had forgotten to shave.  His five o’clock shadow stuck out in all directions in a deep shade of red, contrasting sharply with the dishwater blonde on his oversized head.  I abandoned the quiz I was taking in my Cosmo: Do you come across as desperate? I was more than ready to quit reading it.  Every turn of the page made me feel uglier, fatter, lonelier, and more out of style.

Be sure to check out all the other talented authors on www.SixSunday.com!

Happy New Year, y’all…

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Six Sentence Sunday 12/8/2012

This is my first Six Sentence Sunday submission, from one of the chapters of The Redheaded Stepchild. Be sure to check out the other Six Sentence Sunday submissions at http://www.sixsunday.com!

“It’s a phase,” Leesha said after several minutes. “It’ll pass.” She continued working through the knots. She was determined to eventually kill the tender-headedness I’d had since I was a kid. Once all the knots were out, she put the comb back into the barbicide and went back to the store room my siblings and I took turns scrubbing to over-sterility to retrieve a ponytail holder.

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