TITLE: Chasing Wilde
GENRE: Women's Fiction
Blonde tendrils circle her face giving the appearance she wrapped her hair around wine corks and left it to dry. She’s wearing the pink tweed suit she wore to my college graduation and the scent of must fills my nose. She’s stuck in front of the mirror in my foyer, mesmerized by her appearance.
“How do I look?”
I glance at my watch. “Beautiful, gorgeous. I’m sure they’ll get some good pictures.” She steps up to the mirror and her nose almost touches the glass. “I’m pretty sure they do your makeup there, you know,” I offer.
She pulls her skin, stretching her lips out like the Joker. A lifetime has passed when she finally backs away. “Are they experienced? You know, Hilda went to beauty school…” Her expression turns, like she’s remembering something unpleasant. “I miss having a personal assistant.”
“I miss that for you too, but we need to get going.”
Her sigh is deep and heavy. “You know how things are. I need a good photo for my business cards. No one is going to hire a sixty-year-old real estate agent with no experience and a bad headshot.”
I know Mom’s anxious about her venture into employment, but a photo shoot at Glamour Shots is only going to do so much. The fact she spent her inheritance from Dad, moved in with me, and has to find her first job when most people are retiring is the real problem. Mom’s now paying for a life of delusion.
Miss Snark's First Victim
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
February Secret Agent #4
TITLE: SHENANIGANS ON SISTANZA
GENRE: Tween Romantic Comedy
My twin sister, Ashleigh, and I turn onto our street after our awesome visit to the Sistanza Golf Cart Licensing Bureau. Before you ask, no we’re not identical. She has stick-straight dark brown hair which shockingly does not get frizzy at all despite the humidity for eleven and a half months of the year here. The midday sun beats down on my hair, which is the same color as my sister’s but wavy and stays frizz-free courtesy of a golf-cart-load of extra strength Frizz-Ease after every shower.
All of a sudden, Ashleigh stops walking underneath the mango tree which droops onto the sidewalk from Mr. and Mrs. Fudgewick’s front yard. At first I think she’s stepped on a mango. But before I can tell her that a little mango pulp is just what she needs to jazz up her no-name brand sneakers, my sister grabs my upper arm so tight, I have a flashback of getting my blood pressure checked at Dr. PierceIngBlueEyes’s office. Okay, so his name’s Dr. Pierce but he seriously looks like a TV doctor with his jet-black hair and, you guessed it, piercing blue eyes.
I follow my twin’s gaze to our house. Two brand spanking new golf carts--one purple, one pink--crowned with ginormous floppy bows sit in our driveway. OMG! I race toward them.
Golf carts are the best way to zip around our hometown, the Isle of Sistanza. Now we’re licensed AND have our own golf carts, we can go wherever, whenever--this rocks!
GENRE: Tween Romantic Comedy
My twin sister, Ashleigh, and I turn onto our street after our awesome visit to the Sistanza Golf Cart Licensing Bureau. Before you ask, no we’re not identical. She has stick-straight dark brown hair which shockingly does not get frizzy at all despite the humidity for eleven and a half months of the year here. The midday sun beats down on my hair, which is the same color as my sister’s but wavy and stays frizz-free courtesy of a golf-cart-load of extra strength Frizz-Ease after every shower.
All of a sudden, Ashleigh stops walking underneath the mango tree which droops onto the sidewalk from Mr. and Mrs. Fudgewick’s front yard. At first I think she’s stepped on a mango. But before I can tell her that a little mango pulp is just what she needs to jazz up her no-name brand sneakers, my sister grabs my upper arm so tight, I have a flashback of getting my blood pressure checked at Dr. PierceIngBlueEyes’s office. Okay, so his name’s Dr. Pierce but he seriously looks like a TV doctor with his jet-black hair and, you guessed it, piercing blue eyes.
I follow my twin’s gaze to our house. Two brand spanking new golf carts--one purple, one pink--crowned with ginormous floppy bows sit in our driveway. OMG! I race toward them.
Golf carts are the best way to zip around our hometown, the Isle of Sistanza. Now we’re licensed AND have our own golf carts, we can go wherever, whenever--this rocks!
February Secret Agent #3
TITLE: LAST YEAR'S MISTAKE
GENRE: YA Contemporary Romance
If I had to see a ghost, I guess the first day of school was as good a time as any.
Not that he was really a ghost, but he might as well have been. I’d buried him with a chapter of my life that ended long ago. Or so I thought.
The first day of my senior year of high school started off normal enough. My mother made pancakes for my sister and me, the same as she did every first day of school.
“Problem, Kelsey?” Miranda asked as she caught me eyeing her plate.
“Want some pancakes with your butter and syrup?” My eyes narrowed as the shimmery, sun kissed glow on her freckled cheeks distracted me from the pool of toxic waste in her dish. “Are you wearing my bronzer?”
Miranda ignored the question and nodded toward the Band-aid wrapped around my pointer finger. “What’d you do to your finger?”
“Burned it on my flat iron. Now go get my bronzer and put it back in my room.”
She scrunched up her nose and made her voice as sour and prissy as possible. “Ooh, Kelsey’s so great because she uses a flat iron and bronzer now.”
It took everything I had not to lunge across the table and yank her forever-disheveled, honey colored hair. It was the same color mine had been before I'd kicked it up a notch with some platinum blonde highlights. Never, though, had I let mine look like a tornado had taken up residence on my head.
GENRE: YA Contemporary Romance
If I had to see a ghost, I guess the first day of school was as good a time as any.
Not that he was really a ghost, but he might as well have been. I’d buried him with a chapter of my life that ended long ago. Or so I thought.
The first day of my senior year of high school started off normal enough. My mother made pancakes for my sister and me, the same as she did every first day of school.
“Problem, Kelsey?” Miranda asked as she caught me eyeing her plate.
“Want some pancakes with your butter and syrup?” My eyes narrowed as the shimmery, sun kissed glow on her freckled cheeks distracted me from the pool of toxic waste in her dish. “Are you wearing my bronzer?”
Miranda ignored the question and nodded toward the Band-aid wrapped around my pointer finger. “What’d you do to your finger?”
“Burned it on my flat iron. Now go get my bronzer and put it back in my room.”
She scrunched up her nose and made her voice as sour and prissy as possible. “Ooh, Kelsey’s so great because she uses a flat iron and bronzer now.”
It took everything I had not to lunge across the table and yank her forever-disheveled, honey colored hair. It was the same color mine had been before I'd kicked it up a notch with some platinum blonde highlights. Never, though, had I let mine look like a tornado had taken up residence on my head.
February Secret Agent #2
TITLE: The Color of Happiness
GENRE: YA Contemporary
I’m sitting outside Felicia’s hospital room on a Tuesday.
The nurse tells me room 209 has a view of the park across the street. I wouldn’t know. Her old man won’t let me in to see her. I saw the look he gave me when the nurse told him I was waiting outside. Like he wants to duke it out with me in the parking lot. He blames me for the whole mess. Now he’s in there with her, telling her every lie he can make up.
He doesn’t love you, niña.
This is Jehovah’s way of bringing you back to the church.
He’s not one of us.
I read once that patients in comas can hear everything going on around them. They remember conversations they were never a part of. I hope she isn’t buying any of his crap before I’m able to tell her I love her. I never did that. Yeah, I know, cry me a river.
It’s funny though. Before Felicia, I could say anything to a chola because I didn’t mean it. I told girls anything to get them in bed with me. It was all I cared about.
Te adoro.
Te necesito.
Quiero estar contigo para siempre.
They go crazy for that type of s***. But the girl I wanna say those words to has three fractured ribs, two cerebral contusions, and one severe desire not to wake up.
I drag my eyes away from a smear on the glass door to her room and glance at my cell.
GENRE: YA Contemporary
I’m sitting outside Felicia’s hospital room on a Tuesday.
The nurse tells me room 209 has a view of the park across the street. I wouldn’t know. Her old man won’t let me in to see her. I saw the look he gave me when the nurse told him I was waiting outside. Like he wants to duke it out with me in the parking lot. He blames me for the whole mess. Now he’s in there with her, telling her every lie he can make up.
He doesn’t love you, niña.
This is Jehovah’s way of bringing you back to the church.
He’s not one of us.
I read once that patients in comas can hear everything going on around them. They remember conversations they were never a part of. I hope she isn’t buying any of his crap before I’m able to tell her I love her. I never did that. Yeah, I know, cry me a river.
It’s funny though. Before Felicia, I could say anything to a chola because I didn’t mean it. I told girls anything to get them in bed with me. It was all I cared about.
Te adoro.
Te necesito.
Quiero estar contigo para siempre.
They go crazy for that type of s***. But the girl I wanna say those words to has three fractured ribs, two cerebral contusions, and one severe desire not to wake up.
I drag my eyes away from a smear on the glass door to her room and glance at my cell.
February Secret Agent #1
TITLE: Adventures With Auntie Mischief
GENRE: MG Contemporary Fantasy
Jonah took the carrot stick out of his mouth and jabbed his brother. Most six years olds would have made a face or gone crying to their mother. Brandon didn’t move except to wipe the drool on the back of his hand off on his pant leg, cool as ever. Still, Jonah hated being ignored.
“Hey,” Jonah said, raising the same drool laden carrot stick and holding it inches away from his brother’s face.
Brandon’s attention never wavered except to jut his chin, gesturing at a spot across the room.
Auntie Mischief had arrived.
Their aunt was a mystery they couldn’t quite figure out. Perhaps it was because they didn’t see her as often as their other relatives. Perhaps it was because no matter how much time passed between visits, it was like no time had passed at all. Perhaps it was because no matter how ordinary an activity, when she was around, something strange always seemed to happen, so much so in fact, that they had begun to call their aunt Michelle, Auntie Mischief.
Now their mother and Auntie Mischief stood, heads close together, lips barely moving, faces pinched into frowns, looking like they were waist deep in conversation.
“Something’s up,” Brandon said.
Jonah shrugged. In truth, he always seemed to know when a secretive conversation was going on, one that would be worth listening to at any rate. It made the roof of his mouth itch horribly.
GENRE: MG Contemporary Fantasy
Jonah took the carrot stick out of his mouth and jabbed his brother. Most six years olds would have made a face or gone crying to their mother. Brandon didn’t move except to wipe the drool on the back of his hand off on his pant leg, cool as ever. Still, Jonah hated being ignored.
“Hey,” Jonah said, raising the same drool laden carrot stick and holding it inches away from his brother’s face.
Brandon’s attention never wavered except to jut his chin, gesturing at a spot across the room.
Auntie Mischief had arrived.
Their aunt was a mystery they couldn’t quite figure out. Perhaps it was because they didn’t see her as often as their other relatives. Perhaps it was because no matter how much time passed between visits, it was like no time had passed at all. Perhaps it was because no matter how ordinary an activity, when she was around, something strange always seemed to happen, so much so in fact, that they had begun to call their aunt Michelle, Auntie Mischief.
Now their mother and Auntie Mischief stood, heads close together, lips barely moving, faces pinched into frowns, looking like they were waist deep in conversation.
“Something’s up,” Brandon said.
Jonah shrugged. In truth, he always seemed to know when a secretive conversation was going on, one that would be worth listening to at any rate. It made the roof of his mouth itch horribly.
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