Excerpt - When Worlds Collide - Heart to Heart

I didn’t go back to the kitchen after I left.  Instead I shut myself in my room and sat in silence for a while.  I wasn’t sure if I liked the way Owen was looking at me, his eyes following my every move like he didn’t want to miss a single movement that I made.  I’d seen that look before and I didn’t want to be hurt in the same way that the last person who had looked adoringly at me had done.

My phone buzzed from inside my bag, pulling me away from memories I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember.  A smile broke out across my face when I saw Pippa’s name flash up on the screen.

Hey Ness!  How’s uni going? xxx  The short text made me smile even more.  Alex may have more friends than I could possibly count and may forget about me from time to time, but Pippa was always there.  We might have only been friends for just over a year, but I already loved her in the same way I loved Alex, my childhood best friend.

Things are going OK, I texted back.  Met some really nice people.  You must come visit soon! xxx

“You alright?”  Aislinn asked as she entered the room, shutting the door behind her, a signal to everyone else that we weren’t to be disturbed.

“Fine,” I replied, putting my phone down.  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You seemed a little off when you left,” Aislinn said, perceiving the awkwardness I had wanted to hide.  “I thought someone had said something to offend you and wanted to make sure you weren’t upset.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“But there is something wrong,” Aislinn insisted.  “You know you can talk to me, Nessie.”

“It’s trivial,” I replied, “you’ll think I’m stupid.”

“I could never think that.”  Aislinn sat on her bed opposite me, leaning over so a necklace fell out of her top.

“What’s that?”  I asked, pointing to the rings that were looped onto the chain around Aislinn’s neck.  “They look like wedding rings.”

“Oh,” Aislinn said, surprised as she looked down and saw the rings hanging there.  “Yes, they were my mother’s.  When she died my father gave them to me to remember her by.  I just wish I had actually known her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said as Aislinn held the rings lovingly in her hand.  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s fine,” Aislinn said, a strange smile on her face, almost like she was remembering something.  “I usually wear them on my fingers but since they are clearly an engagement and wedding ring I didn’t want people to get the wrong idea.”

“I’m sure we wouldn’t judge you if you did decide to wear them as rings.  We’d all know the truth behind it.”

“Thanks for the sentiment but I’m not sure I could reveal that just yet.  Besides, we were talking about you.  Why would I think you are stupid?”

“It’s nothing.  Owen just reminded me of something I’d rather forget.”

“Tell me about it,” Aislinn said.  “It helps to get things out in the open instead of keeping them all bottled up and waiting to explode.

“I used to have this boyfriend,” I said, this story being told a little too often for my liking.  “His name was Luke and I thought the world of him and he loved me.  To cut a long story short, we broke up and I’m still in love with him.  The way Owen was looking at me scared me because he was looking at me just like Luke used to and I’m not ready for that.”

“It was probably your mind playing tricks on you,” Aislinn said.  “And if not, I’m sure Owen will understand.”

“I hope he does,” I mumbled to myself.  “At least before it’s too late.”

“So this Luke,” Aislinn asked, refusing to let the subject drop.  “Are you still friends with him?”

“I suppose so,” I replied, turning to look at the pictures on my wall, Luke’s face appearing from most of them.  “I suppose that I want to be with him no matter what, even if it is just as a friend.”

“Does he know this?”

“I don’t know.  He must know how much I care about him or he wouldn’t still want to be friends, he even said that if we feel the same way after university and neither of us has found anyone else then we might be able to get back together.  But three years is a long time.”

“It’s a very long time,” Aislinn agreed.  “Would you want to wait that long for him?”

“It would depend on if he wanted to wait for me,” I said, focusing on the strange patterns in the carpet.  “But I assume because he broke up with me he’s expecting to move on.  I love him, but I don’t want to be his back up in case something goes wrong or he realises that he made a mistake.”

“But those are two very different things.  What if Luke turned up here tomorrow and told you that he loved you and he wanted you back?  Would you forgive him?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“So you are willing for him to admit that he made a mistake?”

“If he turned up tomorrow then yes.  But in three years?  Five years?  Ten years?  I can’t put my life on hold in the hope that he’ll change his mind and realise we were perfect together.”

“I agree, you can only wait so long.  But sometimes the people you love are worth waiting for.”  Aislinn’s hands were playing with her ring finger again; twisting the imaginary ring that she thought was there.  She was clearly very used to wearing her mother’s rings on her finger.

“Well, we’ll just have to see then, won’t we?”  I said, more to myself than to Aislinn, allowing my mind to wander off as the conversation died.

Review - A Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Blurb: Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men.  All will play the Game of Thrones.

Summers span decades.  Winter can last a lifetime.  And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.  It will stretch from the south, where heat breeds plot, lusts and intrigues; to the bast frozen north, where a 700-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond.  The Game of Thrones.  You win, or you die.

My Review:
I know that for many readers, my motivation to read this book probably wouldn't be considered to be the best start.  I picked it up because I had been avidly watching the HBO series based on the novel.  I know, not necessarily the right reason to start reading, but a reason nonetheless.

If anything I was even more excited than normal as I stood in the line at Waterstones to purchase my copy.  You would have thought that all this hype would have been begging for a major disappointment once I started reading.

And yet, from the first page the book had me hooked.  I discovered, quite rightly, that the novel was better than the TV series, even though the TV drama did have an effect on how I saw the novel.

Each character had their own individual voice that drew me in and kept me reading from one chapter to the next, anxious to find out what happens next.  The way the chapters were arranged with many different points of view, changing between a small group of key characters, was perfect for this style of novel.  With so many different stories going on, all linked together in some way, hearing from lots of individual voices and different points of view really gave me a complete sense of the world I was in.  And yet, amongst all these different voices there were a few who naturally stood out more.  Eddard (Ned) Stark's chapters are an obvious one to pick out as important.

As a central character I found Ned very interesting.  He is clearly a very honourable character and always wants to do what is right, and yet he allows himself to be persuaded to leave Winterfell by Robert Baratheon, the man whom Ned helped onto the Iron Throne, even when it isn't in Ned's wishes or even his best interests to leave the life he wants with his family in the north.

Sean Bean as Eddard Stark in
HBO's Game of Thrones

One of the things that shocked me about the novel, probably because I'd been watching the TV series, was the age of many of the characters.  Martin's original characters are much younger than they are portrayed in the HBO series.  Sean Bean, the actor who plays Ned in the TV adaptation, looks all of his fifty years, and yet his character is described as being around thirty-five by George R.R. Martin.  Other characters, such as Daenerys, who is portrayed as an adult on TV is only fourteen years of age at the beginning of the novel.

And yet the youth of these characters in the novel only emphasises how vulnerable they are and increases the shock the reader feels when they learn what they have been through.

Another positive is that George R.R Martin doesn't shy away from challenging or even harming his characters, a strange aspect to look on as positive but if you read the novel you will probably understand where I'm coming from.  In other novels of a similar nature, you don't get the sense that a character is in real danger, and yet with A Game of Thrones there are so many twists and turns you never feel like a character is safe and never know who you can trust.

The atmosphere that Martin creates in this book is phenomenal.  I could almost feel the cold, icy winds coming from the north as Jon Snow performed his watches on the the Wall in contrast to the heat of the south.  Each section of Martin's world is clearly defined and different from every other location, making the world feel a lot bigger and give the events that happen in that world a much grander and more epic scale.

My conclusion; if you're a fan of fantasy novels, pick this up and read it.  There is still so much I haven't said about this novel that you will have to read for yourself.  I can't think of a book I have read recently that I've enjoyed more and I can't wait to pick up the sequel and delve further into the world that George R.R Martin has created.

Excerpt - When Worlds Collide - Opening

University.  I couldn’t believe I was old enough to be going to university, I still felt like a child.  Yet here I was.

“Are you sure you’re alright to take your stuff up on your own?”  My mother said cautiously as she lifted the last box of stuff from the boot of the car.  “I don’t mind coming in with you if that’s what you want.  In fact I would rather make sure you make it to your room with all your stuff so I know you’re settled in.”

I thought about it for a moment.  I knew my mother would make a scene and cry if she came up to my room with me and helped me unpack, making a fool out of me in front of my room mate, and yet at the same time I sort of wanted her to come up with me.  She was all I had and I didn’t want to brush her off like she was nothing.

“Can you come up?”  I asked quietly, staring up at the building.  “I don’t think I’ll be able to carry all this stuff my myself.”

“Of course,” my mother said, picking up a box.  “You lead the way.”

With both of us lugging a box up the stairs, I managed to find my way to the flat where I would be living for the next three years of my life.  There were five rooms to each flat with two people in each room and one kitchen between all of us.  There were hundreds of others exactly the same across the campus but it was the one that I had the key to that would be my home.

I fumbled with the key to the flat door, which was locked for security reasons, finally putting it in the lock and opening the door.  There were other people my age milling around in the corridor with parents holding boxes of stuff identical to mine.  I smiled nervously at them as I passed, searching for my room.

“This is me,” I said, surprised to find the door to my room already open.  I walked in and found that there was already stuff piled up on the right hand side of the room and clothes put away in the right hand side of the wardrobe.  But there was no one else in the room.

“Looks like your room mate has already made herself at home,” my mother observed, putting her box down on the empty bed.  “I’ll go down and get the rest of the stuff.  You start making yourself at home.”  I nodded as my mother left, looking around the room and at the stuff that was already decorating one half of it.  The bedspread was brightly coloured in rainbow stripes and the clothes hanging up in the wardrobe were equally colourful and without a pair of jeans in sight.

I was beginning to wonder what sort of strange person I had been put in a room with when my mother reappeared with another box.

“Come on,” she said, “get unpacking or we’ll never get everything neat and tidy before your room mate shows up again.  You want to make a good impression, don’t you?”

I nodded again, not really listening to what my mother was saying.  Instead I pulled out the duvet and its cover from one of the boxes and began making my bed.  In contrast to the sheets on the bed opposite me, my sheets were white with big dark splotchy purple flowers covering it.  My mother had picked them out for me a few days beforehand and I hadn’t really grown to like them yet.  I would have much preferred to take the plain set of sheets that normally covered my bed at home, but my mother had insisted that I needed a fresh start and that included going out to buy new bedclothes.

Once my bed was made I began pinning up the pictures I had brought with me on the giant corkboard that ran along the wall on my side of the room.  There were a few of me and my mum looking sufficiently awkward, posing together for the shot but the rest of the photos were of my friends.  Alexandra, Pippa and Logan all looked down at me from the board smiling and happy.  But there was one other face that stood out from the rest.

Luke.  I carefully pinned each photo of us together up on the board, remembering the time each photo had been taken.  Luke had been my best friend for years until last year when I had finally built up the courage to tell him that my feelings towards him were far more than just friendship.  I can remember how happy I was when he finally told me he felt the same way and asked me out.  I couldn’t remember a time when I was happier than the time I spent as Luke’s girlfriend, his arms wrapped protectively around me, his lips on mine as Pippa and Alex jeered in the background, making fun of me because they knew I would be embarrassed.

I forced myself to get rid of those memories.  They were bittersweet and made me want to cry even more than I did already.

The summer had been great.  I’d been on holiday with my friends and Luke.  I’d spent most of my time with him, just enjoying feeling him close to me.  And then when the summer ended and university began calling, he appeared at my door one day, his face serious.  I’ll never forget the way he looked at me that day, with so much love in his eyes as he told me that we should break up.

            I was heartbroken.  Luke was my whole world and I couldn’t imagine a life without him in it.  He’d said it was the best for both of us, that we would go off to university and meet new people and have a completely different life.  He said I wouldn’t want to be stuck to him when there were other guys out there who weren’t going to be hundreds of miles away at another university.

I couldn’t find the words to fight back so had blindly accepted what Luke had said.  He told me that we could still be friends and if there was still a spark there after we had finished university then we could see how things went but he didn’t want me to feel obliged to remain his girlfriend when there were so many more opportunities out there.  He said he was doing it because he loved me.

The Madness Continues

Just when you thought you'd got rid of me for a while, here I am again!  Back from Spain with skin looking a bit browner and hair a little blonder than when I left.  Twelve days without Internet has definitely been a trial but now that I'm back I realise that I sort of enjoyed not having it.

I've not been resting while I've been away.  As of yesterday, I finished my first ever Camp NaNo, writing 50,283 words of my novel, Masque, in a month.  Adrianna has developed far beyond my expectations and my plot has run away with me, quite literally.  Familiar faces, Rowena and Artem, have appeared for a cameo appearance that has been growing longer and longer since I first re-introduced them.  And yet I am so proud of what I have achieved, even though the novel isn't complete, I know that I have the beginnings of something that I will be able to complete.

Now you may think that that one round of Camp NaNo is enough madness for one summer, but clearly my sense of what level of madness is sufficient and how many all night typing sessions I can manage before I collapse knows no bounds.  Not only am I taking part in August's session of Camp NaNo, I am starting with a whole new story, rather than writing another 50K on Masque like the rational side of my brain is telling me to do.  Crazy?  Yeah, I think so too!

And so I introduce to you my Camp NaNo novel for August 2011, When Worlds Collide.  This is the long anticipated sequel (by me at least) to the successful Protagonize collab, A Modern Day Fairytale, that I took part in earlier this year.  My character Nessie, is now a year older and a year wiser and heading off, alone, to university.  I know that people say your university years are the best of your life, but Nessie is going to get a lot more than she bargained for when term starts.

In addition to all this Camp NaNo madness, I will be trying to finish Masque at the same time as well as keeping up with my Protagonize collabs.  I think I must have a death wish!

Wish me luck!

Camp NaNo Update

So I've just about crawled past the halfway point and I think I should probably give you a post explaining what I've been up to to make me so absent lately.

At the beginning of day 16 my word count is seriously lacking at 19,420 words when I should be on 24,193.  But being 5,000 words behind schedule at the halfway point isn't so bad, I could be running out of plot.

On that front, my story is developing nicely.  I haven't felt ready to kill any of my characters yet, although Adrianna is going to need some serious re-working in the edit and I've already started picking holes in certain scenes.  But I will keep marching bravely onward and see if I can put some stitches through my gaping plot holes once I've finished.

Excerpt - Masque - Opening

Flaming torches lit the way up the path towards the mansion of Duke Giordano, one of the most influential politicians in the Venerian court.  He was holding a ball in honour of his eldest daughter, Adrianna, coming into society as a woman.  She was twenty, old enough to be presented at the royal court and marry with the permission of her father.

The entrance to the Duke's house was exquisitely decorated, sparkling chandeliers hung from the ceiling, candles flickering from every corner of the room, illuminating the guests, dressed in silk dresses, linen shirts and exotic masks.  Every object, from the jewels worn by the guests, right down to the details on the candlesticks that adorned the room, screamed wealth and prosperity.

The Duke calmly surveyed his guests from the top of his grand staircase, nodding politely at people of importance as they passed below him.  It was a habit of his to watch any visitors to his house as they entered, analyzing their every movement, dissecting their body language to reveal any secrets they were trying to hide.  After years of trying to outwit his political opponents he had grown very good at reading people.

The way Lady Trovato leant towards her husband’s ward, the young, handsome Carlo De Luca,  gave away her hidden desire for him.  Duke Baldari’s constant movement from one foot to another displayed his anxiousness at being in the house of one of his more powerful political opponents and his shaking hands proved he’d had to knock back a few glasses of Dutch courage before getting into his carriage to attend the party.

Duke Giordano observed all this from his spot at the top of the stairs.

“Lady Adrianna is ready, your Grace,” a servant whispered in the Duke’s ear as he saw the last of his guests disappear into the large ballroom.

“Bring her down then,” he ordered, the servant scurrying away to convey the Duke’s message to the women waiting upstairs.  This evening had to go off without a hitch, everyone knew that, Duke Giordano more than anyone was aware of the importance of his eldest daughter’s entrance into society.

The Duke move away from the stairs, walking through the doors behind him and along the exquisitely decorated hallways towards the small antechamber that led into the ballroom.  The small room was deserted when he got there, much to his annoyance, but he waited patiently, observing the fine paintings that decorated his walls.  Duke Giordano was a great patron of what the nobles called ‘good’ art; expensive paintings by semi-well known painters of varying quality.

Five minutes later, the door hurriedly opened and four young women entered, three of them fussing around the other.

“Sorry we are late,” the maid apologized.  “Lady Adrianna couldn’t find her fan.”

“Then stop fussing so we’re not going to be even later than we already are,” the Duke protested sweeping the women away from his eldest daughter to assess her appearance.  “What do you think you’re playing at?”  He hissed as he took in the beautiful olive skin of his daughter’s face.

“I told you it was a bad idea,” one of the girls, Vittoria, the middle daughter, muttered in Adrianna’s ear.

“Where is your mask?”  The Duke demanded.

“I’m not going to wear it,” Adrianna said strongly.  “It is a symbol of oppression and I will not-“

“I don’t care what you think it represents, you will do what I tell you to,” the Duke ordered forcefully.  “You are my daughter, you live in my house and you will follow the rules set down by me and by the rest of our society.  Do you understand?”

Adrianna backed away slightly but still refusing to say anything.

“Go get my daughter’s mask from her room,” the Duke barked at the maid.  “Now!”

The young girl scuttled out of the room, terrified of facing the Duke’s wrath if anything was to go wrong.

“You know how important this evening is,” the Duke hissed at his daughter, leaning in so he was towering over her.  “If you do anything else to endanger it’s success then you will wish you had never been born.”

Adrianna nodded, knowing that this wasn’t the time to mess with her father.  The maid came back, breathless, into the antechamber and handed the mask over to Vittoria who secured the beautiful red silk cover over her face.  The material matched her dress perfectly, the black detailing showing off her coal black hair that was pinned up elegantly so several curls hung around her neck.

“You will be the perfect young lady all those people believe you to be,” the Duke reminded his daughter.

“Yes father,” Adrianna reluctantly replied.

The Duke then turned and threw open the doors, a fixed beaming smile on his face.

“May I present his Grace, Duke Giordano and his daughter, Lady Adrianna.”