TITLE: The Charley Chronicles
GENRE: YA Fantasy
Dead Aunt Gert’s house was full of eyes. True felt them watching as she followed Mom up the massive stone steps of the looming structure. The silent sentinels stared down through the misty night air and dared her to enter.
The porch light flickered, and Mom’s arms and legs stuttered like an old silent movie. True shivered and concentrated on lugging her heavy suitcase up the never-ending stairs. She just wanted to go back to their tiny apartment.
‘Welcome home, True.’
She drew in a quick breath. That ghostly whisper was just in her head, wasn’t it?
The first line doesn't grab me the way you want it to. It immediately makes me wonder why she's calling her Dead Aunt Gert and if she means this literally--like are there eyeballs everywhere? But then this makes no sense since she's not in the house yet. I think you need to make it clear that this is a sense rather than a literal thing.
ReplyDeleteHolly
I was confused because I thought the eyes might be windows
ReplyDeleteAnd what are the silent sentinels? Statues or windows?
I love the rest. Flickering lights, and her mom looks like an old movie. Great line! I would read more.
You have a lot of great description, but I think you can push it to the next level if you get rid of the question at the end. I find that getting rid of questions push me to be more descriptive and sensory-involving, which can be more hooky. Just a thought!
ReplyDeleteIt confuses me that the 3rd POV narrator would refer to True's mother simply as Mom, as True or a sibling would do, rather than "HER" Mom when describing the action, this in both the first and the the second paragraph. Though I sense some fear and anxiety, I think that a description of what she felt in her old tiny apartment compared to Aunt Gert's would make the voice clearer. Making the reader feel True's urgency to go back, rather than telling us.
ReplyDelete